B2B Lead generation calls - Costing
Discussion
So I have been in retail sector for a number of years now, ecommerce based and always been B2C.
A couple of months back we changed our business model and now run a marketplace and although we still do some B2C for the time being we want to focus on B2B and bring more suppliers on board.
We have a great platform with some features on there which are a first in the UK and a real selling point for companies to join but we are struggling to get in front of companies. Either emails are not being received, social media messages are aren't delivering etc. The companies who are joining we have worked with in the past and are really benefitting from signing up.
My plan is now to look at lead generation calls, I could do this my self but think a professional well worded call would be better.
There is lots of companies out there but I dont have a clue on pricing with this type of thing. We are based in the sports retail sector and there is probably around 100 companies I would like to approach initially.
Should I be planning on spending hundreds or is this going to be £1000+ job?
Any tips, recommendations or advice appreciated.
A couple of months back we changed our business model and now run a marketplace and although we still do some B2C for the time being we want to focus on B2B and bring more suppliers on board.
We have a great platform with some features on there which are a first in the UK and a real selling point for companies to join but we are struggling to get in front of companies. Either emails are not being received, social media messages are aren't delivering etc. The companies who are joining we have worked with in the past and are really benefitting from signing up.
My plan is now to look at lead generation calls, I could do this my self but think a professional well worded call would be better.
There is lots of companies out there but I dont have a clue on pricing with this type of thing. We are based in the sports retail sector and there is probably around 100 companies I would like to approach initially.
Should I be planning on spending hundreds or is this going to be £1000+ job?
Any tips, recommendations or advice appreciated.
JCKST1 said:
So I have been in retail sector for a number of years now, ecommerce based and always been B2C.
A couple of months back we changed our business model and now run a marketplace and although we still do some B2C for the time being we want to focus on B2B and bring more suppliers on board.
We have a great platform with some features on there which are a first in the UK and a real selling point for companies to join but we are struggling to get in front of companies. Either emails are not being received, social media messages are aren't delivering etc. The companies who are joining we have worked with in the past and are really benefitting from signing up.
My plan is now to look at lead generation calls, I could do this my self but think a professional well worded call would be better.
There is lots of companies out there but I dont have a clue on pricing with this type of thing. We are based in the sports retail sector and there is probably around 100 companies I would like to approach initially.
Should I be planning on spending hundreds or is this going to be £1000+ job?
Any tips, recommendations or advice appreciated.
Hi, A couple of months back we changed our business model and now run a marketplace and although we still do some B2C for the time being we want to focus on B2B and bring more suppliers on board.
We have a great platform with some features on there which are a first in the UK and a real selling point for companies to join but we are struggling to get in front of companies. Either emails are not being received, social media messages are aren't delivering etc. The companies who are joining we have worked with in the past and are really benefitting from signing up.
My plan is now to look at lead generation calls, I could do this my self but think a professional well worded call would be better.
There is lots of companies out there but I dont have a clue on pricing with this type of thing. We are based in the sports retail sector and there is probably around 100 companies I would like to approach initially.
Should I be planning on spending hundreds or is this going to be £1000+ job?
Any tips, recommendations or advice appreciated.
I’ve used them in the past and my experience means I won’t ever use them again, we spoke to quite a few and found they were good at selling their service to you but then would swap out the master sales person for some depressed monosyllabic junior...
One company went bust and we lost the money, the other just never got any high quality results - a couple of meetings but never with the right person.
Others may have different experiences but no one is going to be as knowledgeable or as passionate about your business/product as you.
From memory we paid a retainer and then £500 a meeting, it was a while ago so my memory could be slightly out on that price.
Unsolicited calls are the stuff of nightmares to many senior managers, my PA always filtered them out. Surely you don’t expect a senior manager to not have a strategic partner they work with? I can’t believe that your call would suddenly make them think “ well bugger me I never thought of that”
Gonzo0 said:
You are better investing in B2B automation technology to help track website visitors and market to them.
Cold calling rarely works.
Drop me a PM as I may be able to guide you in the right direction.
Thanks for the info everyone, it looks like I maybe better off looking at more 'modern' alternatives.Cold calling rarely works.
Drop me a PM as I may be able to guide you in the right direction.
I tried to send you a PM but unfortunately it says you aren't accepting emails?
Feel free to message me if easier, thanks.
Possibly sponsored social media could attract a few bites? my SM feed is full of opportunity type things as I keep looking at the bloody things (thinking "that will never work")
I think I have said before we used SoPro for 3 months to do Linked In prospecting and it bought enough business buit nearly destroyed our credibilty as it approched rivals, current clients and ones we jst dont fit with, so we stopped.
I think I have said before we used SoPro for 3 months to do Linked In prospecting and it bought enough business buit nearly destroyed our credibilty as it approched rivals, current clients and ones we jst dont fit with, so we stopped.
Pick the right company to help you and form a plan and structure to it and you'll succeed. Cold calling works but if you execute it poorly, like anything else, it won't.
Don't assume this doesn't apply to digital media. The world is full of crap websites, social media channels no-one bothers with and PPC/Email marketing that's just a massive financial drain.
Don't assume this doesn't apply to digital media. The world is full of crap websites, social media channels no-one bothers with and PPC/Email marketing that's just a massive financial drain.
Frimley111R said:
Pick the right company to help you and form a plan and structure to it and you'll succeed. Cold calling works but if you execute it poorly, like anything else, it won't.
Don't assume this doesn't apply to digital media. The world is full of crap websites, social media channels no-one bothers with and PPC/Email marketing that's just a massive financial drain.
This is one of the problems I am facing, B2B marketing seems a lot more niche than normal SEO/PPC etc.Don't assume this doesn't apply to digital media. The world is full of crap websites, social media channels no-one bothers with and PPC/Email marketing that's just a massive financial drain.
To be honest we need to do SEO/PPC properly as at the moment other than social media we dont do any specific marketing but we have lots of demand from a large customers base so the B2C side can hold back for a little while allowing us to get more suppliers on board and then once that is on track go to B2C.
The job is trying to find someone good at this type of marketing but also on a reasonable budget. Later in the year once we get on top of all the custom work on the site etc we can increase our budget to £1000+ a month and probably really see the benefits but for now we are a bit short of that.
JCKST1 said:
Thanks for the info everyone, it looks like I maybe better off looking at more 'modern' alternatives.
I tried to send you a PM but unfortunately it says you aren't accepting emails?
Feel free to message me if easier, thanks.
I'll send you a PM with my contact details and we can have a further discussion then.I tried to send you a PM but unfortunately it says you aren't accepting emails?
Feel free to message me if easier, thanks.
Hi Jack, you have the same issue as virtually every B2B owner I have spoken to, how do we generate more sales opportunities.
Just for clarity, I do own a B2B lead generation agency and we do have callers, but we are also a HubSpot partner and provide lots of digital and integrated campaigns.
The key to success of any lead generation campaign is to know your market, I'm not talking about the data, but understand why people will buy from you. For most B2B organisations we aren't selling Ferrari's, there is no aspiration to what we sell. The majority of B2B purchases are to solve a problem or fulfil a need.
Why would somebody come onto your platform, what problem are you solving for them, this answer is also likely to change depending on size, job role, industry, geography, time of year etc. etc.
It doesn't matter what marketing method you use, it is not about you. I have received calls, emails, direct mail and seen adverts, content, blogs and social media posts that want to tell me about their business, I don't care, and at the beginning of a relationship I don't care about you, I want to find out very quickly if and how you can help me with my current key issue.
To do it well lead generation is a long term tactic that you need to monitor and test, do more of what works and tweak what doesn't.
To answer your question about calling, it is like any marketing, if you do it well it will work, if you do it badly it is unlikely to. In terms of costs it is expensive, especially if you are thinking about cold calling. Our average prices are around £400 per day though you can find agencies from £150 +.
Where you use telemarketing in a funnel is important, for me, you get the best returns when you are following up high quality engagements. Get your marketing right and you need less calling time to get a very good ROI.
Any marketing tactic used in isolation is unlikely to get great results, it comes back to understanding your target market to understand which marketing methods to use when.
Whoever you use should understand the B2B sales process and the sales process for your platform, you should spend a lot of time training them well as they are representing your brand.
I have been doing B2B lead generation for nearly 25 years and enjoy talking about it, so if you do have any questions or want to talk through your issues I am more than willing to try and help.
Just for clarity, I do own a B2B lead generation agency and we do have callers, but we are also a HubSpot partner and provide lots of digital and integrated campaigns.
The key to success of any lead generation campaign is to know your market, I'm not talking about the data, but understand why people will buy from you. For most B2B organisations we aren't selling Ferrari's, there is no aspiration to what we sell. The majority of B2B purchases are to solve a problem or fulfil a need.
Why would somebody come onto your platform, what problem are you solving for them, this answer is also likely to change depending on size, job role, industry, geography, time of year etc. etc.
It doesn't matter what marketing method you use, it is not about you. I have received calls, emails, direct mail and seen adverts, content, blogs and social media posts that want to tell me about their business, I don't care, and at the beginning of a relationship I don't care about you, I want to find out very quickly if and how you can help me with my current key issue.
To do it well lead generation is a long term tactic that you need to monitor and test, do more of what works and tweak what doesn't.
To answer your question about calling, it is like any marketing, if you do it well it will work, if you do it badly it is unlikely to. In terms of costs it is expensive, especially if you are thinking about cold calling. Our average prices are around £400 per day though you can find agencies from £150 +.
Where you use telemarketing in a funnel is important, for me, you get the best returns when you are following up high quality engagements. Get your marketing right and you need less calling time to get a very good ROI.
Any marketing tactic used in isolation is unlikely to get great results, it comes back to understanding your target market to understand which marketing methods to use when.
Whoever you use should understand the B2B sales process and the sales process for your platform, you should spend a lot of time training them well as they are representing your brand.
I have been doing B2B lead generation for nearly 25 years and enjoy talking about it, so if you do have any questions or want to talk through your issues I am more than willing to try and help.
Thanks again for the feedback, here is a bit more info.
We cant compete with the likes of Amazon/eBay in terms of traffic but after 8 years of working within this industry what we do have is a large, loyal and returning (and growing) customer base all of which are looking to buy this specific type of product. So when you come to our site you know you are going to be showcasing your stock in front of enthusiasts and more genuine buyers than eBay.
We also provide much more than a basic eBay profile, when a shop joins out site (free to join and no monthly fees) they get their own ministore where they can upload all stock, add a bio, blogs and use the SEO and built in analytics software and more. On top of this they get to benefit from our customer base and can start accepting all credit and debit cards right away via Stripe, our fees overall are around half of eBay and PayPal combined.
Our new feature is a retail finance facility, our company is actually one of the first in the UK to offer this on a marketplace. It will allow shops to join our platform and start offering finance on their products online (through out site) and instore (again through our site so we keep the commission). As they will come under our parent FCA account we can accept much smaller companies than the likes of V12, Close brothers etc. They also dont need a full FCA account which is expensive and time consuming so we can have them offering finance within about 1-2 weeks and there account will be managed by an FCA specialist to keep everything inline (very small monthly fee for that).
Our target market is the smaller shops, ones who are primarily trading locally and want to go online. In less than 30 mins they can have their own account online with us, be showcasing all their stock, taking payments and soon offering finance. The companies who have signed up are doing great with a couple last month doing £10k - £20k extra through our platform so it does work.
We just need to get it out there and social media/emails dont really cut it BUT I dont have the budget to be spending £200+ per day on marketing at the moment as we are still adding and developing the site, processing our own orders etc. We have a healthy cash reserve but this is needed for us to trade, if we were 100% just managing the marketplace only then we could use it but we cant use that on marketing and sacrifice the other shop at the moment.
My plan is to remove our own shop from the marketplace by the end of the year, hopefully by then the marketplace will be generating enough income for us to focus 100% on managing that and the shops on there, at the moment we are still selling on there like a normal shop to keep up our income.
There is huge potential with this, we would like to get it running smoothly in the UK and then replicate throughout Europe. Our finance partner is going to work with us to offer EU retail finance so we have the potential, plus we have interest from EU shops (a few signed up) who are looking to benefit from selling stock in the thriving UK market apposed to countries such as Romania, Poland, Spain etc as the products we sell range from £500 - £6000+ so its a lot harder selling in some of these countries compared to the UK.
Hopefully the above helps a bit more. My other option would be to take out a small-ish loan and top up with some company profits to give the marketing a kick up the backside, in the hope that the money this would generate would cover all/part of the loan repayments.
Any more info would be great.
We cant compete with the likes of Amazon/eBay in terms of traffic but after 8 years of working within this industry what we do have is a large, loyal and returning (and growing) customer base all of which are looking to buy this specific type of product. So when you come to our site you know you are going to be showcasing your stock in front of enthusiasts and more genuine buyers than eBay.
We also provide much more than a basic eBay profile, when a shop joins out site (free to join and no monthly fees) they get their own ministore where they can upload all stock, add a bio, blogs and use the SEO and built in analytics software and more. On top of this they get to benefit from our customer base and can start accepting all credit and debit cards right away via Stripe, our fees overall are around half of eBay and PayPal combined.
Our new feature is a retail finance facility, our company is actually one of the first in the UK to offer this on a marketplace. It will allow shops to join our platform and start offering finance on their products online (through out site) and instore (again through our site so we keep the commission). As they will come under our parent FCA account we can accept much smaller companies than the likes of V12, Close brothers etc. They also dont need a full FCA account which is expensive and time consuming so we can have them offering finance within about 1-2 weeks and there account will be managed by an FCA specialist to keep everything inline (very small monthly fee for that).
Our target market is the smaller shops, ones who are primarily trading locally and want to go online. In less than 30 mins they can have their own account online with us, be showcasing all their stock, taking payments and soon offering finance. The companies who have signed up are doing great with a couple last month doing £10k - £20k extra through our platform so it does work.
We just need to get it out there and social media/emails dont really cut it BUT I dont have the budget to be spending £200+ per day on marketing at the moment as we are still adding and developing the site, processing our own orders etc. We have a healthy cash reserve but this is needed for us to trade, if we were 100% just managing the marketplace only then we could use it but we cant use that on marketing and sacrifice the other shop at the moment.
My plan is to remove our own shop from the marketplace by the end of the year, hopefully by then the marketplace will be generating enough income for us to focus 100% on managing that and the shops on there, at the moment we are still selling on there like a normal shop to keep up our income.
There is huge potential with this, we would like to get it running smoothly in the UK and then replicate throughout Europe. Our finance partner is going to work with us to offer EU retail finance so we have the potential, plus we have interest from EU shops (a few signed up) who are looking to benefit from selling stock in the thriving UK market apposed to countries such as Romania, Poland, Spain etc as the products we sell range from £500 - £6000+ so its a lot harder selling in some of these countries compared to the UK.
Hopefully the above helps a bit more. My other option would be to take out a small-ish loan and top up with some company profits to give the marketing a kick up the backside, in the hope that the money this would generate would cover all/part of the loan repayments.
Any more info would be great.
Audicab said:
In terms of costs it is expensive, especially if you are thinking about cold calling. Our average prices are around £400 per day though you can find agencies from £150 +.
I know what you mean, but to qualify here, it's only expensive if it doesn't work or your ROI is off. For example I worked in M&A, selling SME+ businesses. Up front fees were around £25k and commissions were often in the hundreds of thousands. Telemarketing was low cost to us given the value of just one client but if we'd been selling printer cartridges....To do any marketing well costs money and there will always be a leap of faith/a test to see if it does work. But do the numbers and work out what you need to get to break even, what an av customer is worth etc. and it's not so hard to determine success, or not. If it succeeds do more, if not work out why or try another tack but don't rely on digital to get you everything. In the m&A example I had a huge budget and we marketed every channel to death but even so, telemarketing still brought in a significant number of clients who didn't respond to anything else.
Its a bit of a catch 22, one on hand we need to invest quite a lot of money in to the marketing side of it but on the other we dont have a huge amount of surplus cash to do it.
Realistically what sort of budget would we be looking at for B2B marketing to give this chance and get continued suppliers on board?
If we could get £1000 per month would that make a dent or barely scratch the surface?
Realistically what sort of budget would we be looking at for B2B marketing to give this chance and get continued suppliers on board?
If we could get £1000 per month would that make a dent or barely scratch the surface?
A useful place to find marketplace sellers by volume, location and what marketplaces they're selling from is https://www.salesoptimize.com, but you really need all the campaigns and sales team ready to go to get the best from it. I work for a logistics software company and we've found it useful if a little pricey.
Ph1listine said:
A useful place to find marketplace sellers by volume, location and what marketplaces they're selling from is https://www.salesoptimize.com, but you really need all the campaigns and sales team ready to go to get the best from it. I work for a logistics software company and we've found it useful if a little pricey.
Thanks for the heads up.If you dont mind me asking what sort of price do they charge?
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