In today’s digital landscape, generating leads is a key strategy for unlocking new business products and opportunities. What exactly is lead generation? In general, it’s the process of creating and capturing leads for a business that will ultimately become customers. Lead generation can be initiated in a variety of ways, but the objective is always the same: generate new leads for your (or someone else’s) business. An effective lead generation agency will combine proven tactics with a strategic and data-driven approach to drive prospective customers into a sales process.
If you’re thinking about starting your own lead generation agency, this blog post will help you understand if that’s the right move for you and also give you actionable advice on how to get started. Doing lead generation or appointment setting is easy once you know the formula and almost anyone can do it. All it takes is some hard work and your customers (other businesses) only pay if you deliver. It’s a win-win strategy.
While no business is truly “passive” starting a Lead Generation Agency is one of the most flexible and easy businesses to start. Ready to get started?
The Business
A business that anyone can start is a B2B lead/marketing/sales agency. Here are the steps needed to get started. Your startup costs will be about $200 or less (detailed below). If you have any experience in sales, business development, or marketing then a lot of this should come naturally.
The Problem Your Solving
Every company from Local Businesses to Fortune 500s has targets and needs to grow revenues each year, but hiring people to book sales calls gets expensive. During a recession, companies scale back, and often times the highest earners are laid off as company expenses are
The Solution
Your new B2B Sales Agency. Your firm generates leads & they (the company your contract with) pay for each lead you book. You charge $100-$500 per call & they’re still saving a lot of money on quality leads compared to the cost and ROI of a Business Development Rep (BDR) or Sales Development Rep (SDR).
Launch
You will need about $200 to get started. If done right, you will make this back in a single day. Also, a lot of these services offer free trials, so make sure to take advantage of them.
- $1/mo Google Domains
- $10/mo for Google Business Suite or Zoho
- $59/mo for MailShake (optional)
- $79/mo COSLR
- $15/mo for Webflow
- $13/mo for Canva
STEP 1 — Branding
Come up with a name for your new agency. Namelix.com is a great service to come up with something catchy. A domain ending with .com is recommended because it does a bit better for SEO reasons, but you can do a .io or .net if the name you want is taken.
On Namelix, type in some key phrases such as “leads, sales, marketing” to see the results and get some ideas. Here is an example name and logo that was generated in 60 seconds.
STEP 2 — Website
Go to Google domains or Namecheap and register your new domain from your brand. Then use Webflow to set up a beautiful-looking site. You can also use WordPress and install a nice-looking theme. If you don’t know how to do this, then you can always pay someone on Fiver or Upwork. Also uses Canva.com where necessary to get templates, graphics, etc.
STEP 3- Get Customers
This is a big part of your success. You will generate customers for your B2B agency as well as leads for your customers using the same methodology. Sign up for the monthly or yearly plan at COSLR.com and get a Linkedin Sales Navigator or Linkedin Premium. It’s not required but will make things easier when sourcing leads and automating the process at scale.
Install the COSLR extension for contact capture. COSLR is an amazing tool because you’re getting about 90% of the functionality you need from the leads database, LinkedIn contact gathering, and email automation. You get a lot of functionality with COSLR and it can seem overwhelming, but overall you’re going to find companies, the contacts, and do the messaging all with COSLR.
STEP 4 — Message or Email Them
COSLR has a built-in email cadence option which is very powerful and allows you to set up multiple domains for your agency and multiple aliases for each of those domains. In addition, COSLR has built-in email templates that can be used similarly to what’s shown below.
If you’re unsure how to set up email SMTP then you can try another solution like Mailshake. It does add a small additional monthly cost. Start slowly by sending 20 emails a day. DO NOT send hundreds of emails. You need to learn the proper emails that convert.
Here is an example email template that works well:
Good afternoon {first name},
Is {company} looking to grow its customer base? My name is {first name} and I represent {company} which is an outsourced Lead Generation Agency. We introduce you to hundreds of potential clients each month. Best of all, you only pay for those that are actually interested in {their product or service}.
Can you introduce me to handles decisions in the {sales/customer relationship/product buying} department?
Thank you in advance,
{insert email signature here}Find a tone that works for you and change the format as necessary based on feedback. This is both an art and a science.
STEP 5 — Scaling
CrunchBase gives you visibility into 1,000s of SaaS/Tech startups & other extremely useful info like when they were last funded Another thing that pays for itself with one good cold email. However, to start, just get a free trial & copy+paste into word/excel/google sheets.
You can also use COSLR’s existing database of B2B leads, but make sure you are taking a targeted approach. Sending thousands of emails to companies in multiple verticals typically isn’t a recipe for sucess.
Congratulations!
You now own a B2B Sales and Lead Generation agency. Best of all as you grow you will have case studies & testimonials from real SaaS companies. This method works and many agency owners have followed this model successfully for a long time. The really nice thing is this is not a zero-sum game. There are hundreds of thousands of companies out there from your local dentist to Fortune 500’s that need leads.
Advice from Lead Generation Experts
We asked some industry experts “what are the top 3 things someone should know when starting a lead generation agency?” This was their feedback:
- Record your workflows and processes digitally sooner rather than later
- Put your growth focus internally on the human aspect of your business, not tools or automation
- Align your team’s values with your company’s values
- Scaleproof your business by monthly or quarterly asking what would break if you’d quadruple your biz
All these might sound obvious, however are the most missed aspects
- Pay per lead is not a viable business model.
- Expectation management is the most underrated part of the sales process.
- Qualify your clients as rigorously as they’re qualifying you: if they can’t close deals they’ll blame your leads, not their process.
