“Can You Make Me An Omelette?” Asks Bobby Flay
Bobby Flay, celebrity chef of Iron Chef America fame once said, “When I’m hiring a cook for one of my restaurants and I want to see what they can do, I usually ask them to make me an omelette.”
That does sound strange, doesn’t it? Celebrity chef, more than ten famous restaurants, and he asks a potential candidate to make an omelette? So basic! But when you think about it, that’s just the point—a good cook is not one who can create extraordinary dishes out of exotic ingredients. A really good cook is one that can use the most basic ingredients and create extraordinary dishes. I’m guessing, but I suppose Bobby would judge the omelettes based on creative skills of the cook, perfect balance of tastes, just the right seasoning, light fluffy texture, wholesomeness, presentation and timing or preparation. These qualities and features are fundamental to a good omelette so a cook that can’t excel at these is simply not good enough for a celebrity chef’s restaurant.
Take the same logic and apply it to a B2B lead generation company. If you are looking to hire one, all potential vendors will already have in place (I hope!) the basic tools and techniques required to run your lead generation campaign. So how do you differentiate one provider from the other? What should you look for? And what will help you decide whether or not the company you choose has the ability to deliver extraordinary results and lead generation ROI?
You need a partner that aligns with your objectives, customizes a lead generation strategy designed to deliver on those goals and then skilfully implements your lead generation program, monitoring and measuring at every step.
Here are some key questions to ask your B2B lead generation service provider.
Hiring Checklist – 4 Key Questions to Ask Your B2B Lead Generation Partner
1. UNIVERSAL DEFINITION OF A LEAD? Start at the very beginning. Does the lead generation company understand and agree with your universal definition of a lead? If their definition is different from yours, you need to reach consensus first to ensure that your time and resources are not barking up the wrong tree. For example, imagine running a webinar that gets 500+ registrations but 300+ are not even your target audience or ideal prospects! What went wrong? Wrong list for one and possibly even a very attractive offer that brought in the rush of attendees looking to grab whatever you are giving away. Conversions will be low and ROI insufficient.
2. LEAD GENERATION PROCESS STEPS? Does your potential B2B lead generation partner have a proven process? Is there a track record of success? How often do they revisit this process to verify its ongoing efficacy? An automated system with a handful of complex reports and metrics does not qualify as a ‘process’. You need to see that at every step in the process, there are clear lines of responsibility, there is a way to evaluate accountability and there is measurement and conversion tracking capability throughout the campaign.
3. SYNCHRONIZATION BETWEEN MULTIPLE LEAD GENERATION CHANNELS? I have seen this happen in so many organizations that multiple channels are being used for lead generation but there is no common connect. Campaigns are running in silos instead of being closely bound by a cohesive strategy. As a result, leads slip through the cracks, nurturing mechanisms fail or don’t deliver optimum results and there you go again, waste of time, money and effort. Ask your B2B lead generation service provider for a uniform strategy that binds together all of their campaign efforts across different channels.
4. FAILURE AND SUCCESS STORIES? Any lead generation company that tells you they never failed a campaign should just put you on high alert right away. As you do your credentials verification and background checks about the potential lead generation company, ask them to share with you both, failure and success stories. There is always something to learn from someone else’s mistakes as well as your own. And of course, the success stories should tell you what the company is capable of and what results you can expect to see.
More next time! If you are in the process of hiring a B2B lead generation company, send me a quick email and let’s chat about how to evaluate potential service providers.
