Lead Generation – Getting Leads Offshore When You're An Onshore Business

If you're targeting local businesses as an onshore BPO company, there's an inclination to criticize your offshore rivals. Now that can't be helped, competition inspires such actions but please be careful when that attitude closes you off from other offshore services like lead generation. Here are three factors that should explain why:

1. Process

Obviously, just because you don't think your process is advisable to outsource doesn't mean the same for every other business process. You offer financial planning so obviously the closer you are geographically, the more likely your prospects and customers will trust you. (On a side note, it would also please them to know that the won't have to book a flight just to meet with you.) Your close proximity implies easier accessibility.

However, you don't necessarily need that proximity in lead generation. Offshore lead generation firms with a global market have strictly secured online databases which only you can access, regardless of geographical location. Defining qualified leads (which will be tackled next) can be easily done via overseas communication unlike discussions on financial reports and other, more confidential business data.

2. Elements of qualified leads

Your salespeople might have a lot of specifications that define financial planning leads however, are those definitions enough reason to keep it onshore? Sure, you can say that some prospects might want to relay more sensitive information during the marketing phase but that's more of a sign to redirect the leads towards sales. It doesn't mean that your offshore marketers are required to do their job. (In fact, they might even oppose to that idea.) One of the advantages of marketers is that while they don't have as much problem-solving expertise as sales, their more general understanding makes it easier for them to bridge gaps between specialists and their market. You maybe able to suggest an effective and complex financial solution but marketers only need to know enough to make it understandable and appealing to your prospects. That doesn't mean they want to be privy to everything you do between yourself and your customers.

3. Results

The results of your offshore lead generator don't have any connection to their location either. You want leads? All you need to do is log in to their database and there you have them. Their quality will speak for themselves once your salespeople report their own results. None of this require geographical proximity nor an actual visit to your offshore marketer's office. Furthermore, many offshore marketing firms also claim cost-efficiency as their advantage. Should their leads prove beneficial, then why stop outsourcing them? Wouldn't it be better to generate them at a lower cost to help lower the bottom-line costs of your entire business?

These same facts should be considered even when comparing yourself to offshore financial planning firms. You will find a sharp difference between comparisons to them and comparisons to other offshore businesses who do other business processes like lead generation and marketing. In the case of marketing, the process is already different, its purpose doesn't warrant geographical proximity, nor does that proximity have any connection to the results required. You can generate your leads offshore even you're an onshore company.

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Accounting Leads – Questions That Can Indicate Expectations

Knowing the expectations of a business prospect is part of the qualification phase in B2B lead generation. It not only tells you if you can meet up with them but also what you can do to help them understand the value your accounting services. That's why the sooner you discover these expectations, the sooner you can qualify your accounting leads.

For example, suppose your accounting services offer compliance consulting (particularly for taxes). Generating accounting leads for this particular kind of service will naturally have a related set of expectations.

What's interesting is that these expectations can easily reveal themselves depending on the kind of questions they ask. These could be asked by your prospect at any point in the sales process but they all require the things they want from compliance consulting.

1. Why should we trust you? - Obviously the most important first step in marketing: establishing trust. Furthermore, it's not only to be gained but also maintained. Do it right and that trust will eventually translate into loyalty. On the other hand, that loyalty can only be continuously earned if you market only quality service and integrity. That's one of the most basic but still most important expectations. 

2. Why do we need this? - This is a test of your expertise. Many B2B customers these days actually have enough capacity and information resources to really prove themselves a match. That's a call to higher quality but it's also another call to market that quality when you have it. They're looking for someone who can do things better than what they already know, so of course your accounting leads should alert your salespeople to present that proof. 

3. Will this get us in trouble? - This question sounds pretty loaded but if that's the case, then so is the entire subject on taxes. But then again, that's what compliance consulting is for isn't it? Its primary function is to assure their business clients that their tax reports are accurate and well within the requirements of government regulations. It's their way of testing expertise and awareness of bad business practices. If they didn't at least suspend their disbelief and expect that you could do this, they wouldn't even ask this question. 

4. How much will this cost? - And of course, you can't forget that when times are hard, taxes can make them harder. Questions like this will always indicate a budget which is a common measure of quality in lead generation. Prospects who ask questions like this expect your service to be affordable without a negative effect on quality and integrity. 

Knowing their expectations will also indicate the levels of priority a prospect will have on certain service features. They may not ask all the questions mentioned here after all. The expectations that these questions imply can also foreshadow the direction of your business relationships with them. That means it's not only sales that they can help plan ahead but possibly your entire company! Your sales leads must give such helpful information to your sales team prior to their meeting with qualified prospects.

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Qualifying Accounting Leads – General Or Specialist Knowledge?

Expertise is a popular selling point used by B2B sales and marketing. More specifically, it's expertise regarding that particular industry. It demonstrates a level of familiarity among marketers when they engage with possible accounting prospects. It demonstrates the knowledge of a salesperson when they're pursuing accounting leads.

Although, have you ever once reflected on your own standards for measuring that expertise? Are there times when you felt that you were being picky because you have yet to find a marketing or sales group that shares the same level of accounting knowledge as you? Were you ever frustrated with how their understanding was still too general and couldn't really relay your intricate message in your proposals and marketing material?

Well, before you consider looking for even more specialist candidates, you might want to read this article from Forbes. The subject deals with both specialists and generalists in the business world. More importantly, it might give you some food for thought and reasons to give the generalist approaches another chance:

“'We’ve become a society that’s data rich and meaning poor,' he says. 'A rise in specialists in all areas—science, math, history, psychology—has left us with tremendous content but how valuable is that knowledge without context?' Context, he says, which can only be provided by generalists whose breadth of knowledge can serve as the link between the hard-won scientific breakthroughs (think the recent Higgs-Boson discovery) and the rest of the world.”

It could be that forging that link can be just as important as pure expertise. For example:

• An outsourced telemarketing firm may not be able to fully grasp the finer points of your analyst techniques but they can use their general understanding and mold it into a message that's not only clear but very relevant to your target decision makers.

• When you're pursuing sales leads placed in your CRM, the information you first deemed as too general can act as the starting point of your discussion in a scheduled appointment. That in turn could lead to a deeper discussion with a prospect and give you insight that can help close the deal.

Speaking of which, different perspectives are another thing that general knowledge can provide, at least according to the article:

“After collecting more than 80,000 forecasts he concluded that when seeking accurate predictions, the non-experts were the best bet. It’s better, he said, to turn to those who “know many things, draw from an eclectic array or traditions and accept ambiguity and contradictions” than so-called experts. Relying on a single perspective, he found, was problematic, even detrimental to predicting an accurate outcome.”

You might be knowledgeable about the technical workings of accounting services but that might not be the same for your market. You might have greater need for people who can see things from their perspective rather than that of the experts.

This doesn't mean that expert opinion should be shunned. In fact, it could only mean that you'll need one as much as the other to complete the big picture. Why not go back and reconsider those marketers and salespeople with 'general knowledge'? They might have the other half of it.

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Generating Loyalty For Accounting Lead Generation

New contacts are just one source for accounting lead generation. There's also the alternative of targeting your current customers for entirely new leads. Many people have compared this strategy to B2C loyalty programs because it focuses on retaining current customers.

However, is it really a good idea to to have a B2B version of such programs? Well according to this article from StreetFightMag, not even B2C loyalty programs are as effective in influencing customer behavior:

“A recent study by First Data found that only 4% of rewards program members indicated that their membership influenced their decision of which restaurant to visit. In other words, a customer that buys a product nine times is going to buy the product a 10th time regardless of whether it’s free or not.”

Don't think that this could just apply to restaurants or even just B2C. The fact is relying on freebies and promos isn't all that effective in changing customer behavior. While the article goes on to describe how B2C businesses can fix their loyalty programs, this excerpt summarizes a point that could apply to any business (B2C or B2B).

“Customers are loyal to a restaurant because of good food and good service — not because of a deal, coupon, or a buy nine, and get the 10th free offer. No customer loyalty program in the world can drive customers to a restaurant with bad food and bad service.”

Now suppose you were to just replace words like restaurant, food, and coupon with things like accounting service, financial reports, and discount costs. While there's no doubt that lower costs are a major selling point for B2B accounting firms, relying on promos instead of the sheer quality of your service will eventually raise up those costs and the point becomes moot.

Using these promos and programs can also be bad business practice if you're using them as a means to keep customers dependent on your services. If you want a customer to continue business with you, then that dependence should still be based on the quality of your service and how you distinguish yourself from others. It shouldn't be based on anything else.

For a start, remember that you need to develop a relationship with your B2B clients. Even after you've closed your first deal with them, stay in touch and be at the ready if they suddenly have something to complain about. You can also ease communication between your business and theirs by:

• Diversifying Customer Support – Outsource to call centers with professional telemarketers to help manage calls from clients. Fix up your email response strategy so that they'll hear from you much sooner. Should a prospect request a meeting with you to discuss a problem, give them a date that they're most comfortable with.

• Doing Surveys – These can be phone surveys done using your current customer database. These can also be polls conducted on your business website. In both cases, you generate feedback from your clients and that feedback will give you insight on how to maintain (and even improve) the quality of your services.

If you're planning on using some sort of loyalty program, it shouldn't focus on anything but the quality of your accounting services. That's the only true way of gaining loyalty from any business, not subtle schemes that make it hard for them to find an alternative for reasons that have nothing to do your with your niche.

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