What to Know Before Signing with Lead Partners?

Before signing with lead partners in B2B marketing, it’s essential to consider their impact on your sales pipeline and brand image. 

In B2B marketing, the involvement of lead generation companies may prove to be a best practice for your business. However, when it comes to signing a lead partner, looking at the relationship alone is not the best option.

Such partners have the potential of impacting anything from your sales pipeline to your brand image, and therefore, making the right choice is imperative. Here are a couple of things that you ought to be aware of before signing with lead partners. 

1. Understanding Your Business Needs 

When contemplating engaging with a lead partner, the first and most important step is knowing what your business requires. What do you desire to achieve from lead generation? Are you wanting more leads or better quality leads? Determining whether such opportunities are broad based or narrow as well as which international or domestic will assist in choosing a partner who will have similar objectives. 

Also, think about the leads you require. Do you need leads only at the top of the funnel, i.e. MQLs or do you need also leads that are ready for the sales call level, i.e. SQLs? This is important because different partner leads have different levels within the desired sales funnel. 

2. Evaluating the Partner’s Expertise and Experience 

It is a fact that there are differences among lead generation companies. Therefore, prospective partner evaluation on different skills and experience level should be performed.

For example, if you plan to generate leads from the healthcare sector, look for partners who have had such experience or have worked on sales to the healthcare sector. Every potential partner’s understanding of your market is very crucial in determining your lead generation campaigns success. 

3. Understanding Their Lead Generation Techniques 

In addition, there’s a big variation in the lead generation techniques used by different lead partners. These include looking on goggle, in social media, and through cold calls on the phone. It is very important to be aware of the techniques these companies use and the position of your brand concerning these techniques and action plans. 

As an illustration, if your brand is all about producing and marketing interesting and informative content, a lead generation partner whose main technique is telemarketing will not be beneficial. Make sure that they do not turn out to be in conflict with your communication strategy but rather function synergistically with it. 

4. Transparency in Lead Sourcing 

One of the most important aspects to consider is how a lead partner goes about sourcing their leads. Transparency is here of utmost importance. It is imperative to find out the origins of the leads, their acquisition ways, as well as their permission to be contacted.

With the increasing trend in ‘buying’ leads from third party vendors and other dubious tactics, it is easy to tarnish the brand and get in trouble such as legal cases concerning data privacy laws. 

5. Analyzing the Cost Structure 

It is critical to know what a lead generation partnership will cost. Companies expect their lead partners to recommend varying prices based on different models, say, cost per lead (CPL), cost per acquisition (CPA), or even using a flat retainer. This all has a bearing on your budget and ROI. 

6. Ensuring Alignment with Your Brand Values 

Any lead partner you choose will, in one form or another, become the face of your brand, especially if they carry out outbound activities like calling or emailing prospects. This makes it important for the partner’s approach and culture to be in sync with yours. 

Outcomes will depend on how the partner goes about reach out activities. Is the tone and approach, professionalism or respect as well as the messaging core to the brand maintained? Any disparity in addressing this issue is detrimental in that it hurts the corporate image and the relationship with consumers. 

7. Evaluating, Reporting and Communication 

Achieving success in a partnership requires efficient communication and continuous reporting. Once you are ready to sign, check what kind of reporting you will get from a lead partner.

How often will they provide updates? What will they be tracking / monitoring and what will they share with you? Regular and open communication will enable you to check whether the lead generation activities are effective and which parts need to be altered. 

8. Considering Scalability and Flexibility 

Business requirements could change with time and therefore, there will be a need to work with a lead generation firm that is able to grow along with the client. Anyone planning to enter any new market or increase on the volume of leads should have a partner who will be able to fit into the growth. 

9. Legal and Compliance Considerations 

Finally, after everything’s settled, ask any potential lead partner to ensure their processes are legally sound – that means content like GDPR, CCPA, CAN-SPAM compliance and so forth. Otherwise you might have to face huge penalties, other disciplinary actions and there is the risk of ruining your brand image. Real case studies characterize, their privacy policies & practices, data protection & even provide o/g guidelines.