The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

B2B Lead Generation Company: 5 Critical Questions to Ask to Choose the Right Partner

• Tim and Cindy Dodd

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Are you tired of hearing promises from lead generation companies that don’t deliver?

The truth is, the lead gen space is crowded with flashy claims but often lacks substance.In this episode, we’re breaking down the critical questions you MUST ask before signing on the dotted line.. With so many agencies promising the world, it’s easy to get BURNED or make the wrong choice. We’ll share our insider knowledge on what separates GREAT lead gen companies from the rest, so you can save TIME, MONEY, and FRUSTRATION.

Stay tuned because at the end, we’ll share the critical mistake that 90% of companies overlook when hiring—and how to avoid it!

  • The Importance of Asking the Right Questions [00:00]
  • Question #1: Defining Key Terms [03:18]
  • Question #2: Understanding Metrics of Success [07:33]
  • Question #3: Proof of Past Success [14:20]
  • Question #4: Industry Credentials and Reputation [17:46]
  • Question #5: Scalability of Solutions [21:14]

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About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

  • PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

00:00
And so it's very important you ask the right questions. And I'll tell you this because nine out of 10 people that get on the phone with our sales team and have been burned by other lead generation companies, nine out of 10 of the people that reach out to us. And these are, you know, this could be a $20 million company, a $200 million company, a $2 billion company, client of ours we're working with right now. It's a publicly traded $2 billion company. And they've said they've tried this before. They're getting incredible results with us.

00:28
but they've tried this before. So no matter what size your company is, it's critical that you understand the right questions to kind of get past like all of the hypey front end promises and get down to the core of can this company actually get me meetings at scale with the people I want to talk to? That's it. Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business.

00:58
Let's get with you. Five questions to ask when hiring a lead generation company. If you are in the stage where you are considering outsourcing your lead generation and appointment setting, you want to make sure to ask one of these, or rather all of these five questions. Because the reality is there are so many lead gen agencies out there, a lot of them making crazy promises, and we want to make sure that you are equipped to ask the right questions.

01:28
but also to select the best company that is going to deliver on what you and your company needs. So let's dive into the five questions to ask when considering a B2B lead generation agency. Talk about the importance of the right questions is that it is really easy to start a lead generation company. You go listen to the top people's sales calls, you go do a fake sales call with them.

01:54
and you see what they're offering and what they're pitching. And it becomes very easy to replicate the sales process of higher level lead generation companies. We see people do this with our company Pima all the time. We have people that are constantly copying our strategies, constantly copying like the way we sell and we pitch. And so what happens is if you're not asking the right questions on the outside, the offer can look.

02:19
Oh my gosh, this looks great. If I were to put these things next side by side, oh my gosh, their offer looks incredible because they become good at selling it, they become good at over-promising, but they're really bad at fulfillment. Like Lead Generation is one of the easiest companies there is out there to start. You need a software, maybe you watch some YouTube videos, you get on some sales calls with your competitors so you see how they pitch, you copy their sales pitch. Boom, you've got a Lead Generation company.

02:46
But lead generation, if anybody's done it, if people are listening to this episode and they've tried to do it on their own and they're really experienced with their industry and their prospect, it is incredibly, incredibly, incredibly hard to do and requires a lot of skills on processes, copywriting, just, there's so many dynamics that goes into this. And so it's very important you ask the right questions. And I'll tell you this because nine out of 10 people that get on the phone with our sales team and...

03:14
have been burned by other lead generation companies. Nine out of 10 of the people that reach out to us, and these are, this could be a $20 million company, a $200 million company, a $2 billion company, a client of ours we're working with right now, it's a publicly traded $2 billion company, and they've said they've tried this before. They're getting incredible results with us, but they've tried this before. So, no matter what size your company is, it's critical that you understand the right questions to...

03:42
kind of get past all of the hypey front end promises and get down to the core of can this company actually get me meetings at scale with the people I want to talk to? That's it. Yes, so good. So let's dive into those five questions. What is the first one? Number one is to have them define the words they're using for prospect. What does a prospect mean?

04:12
What does a lead mean? What does a booking mean? What does a qualified booking mean? Because I will see all the time, a former episode we did, we talked about a prospect is a person that is the right person but they haven't shown interest yet, right? I could have 10,000 prospects, which is just like an email list. That's a prospect. A lead is gonna be somebody on that list that I've already reached out to. They've already said, yes, I wanna talk to you about your services. They've raised their hand.

04:41
And a booking is somebody that is actually booked a call. What I see all of the time in this industry is people call a prospect a lead, right? They call this a qualified lead. And so they go, we're gonna get you 500 leads every month for X amount of money. You go, wow, gosh, like that's such a good return on investment, but really what they're doing is they're doing 500 prospects a month, which is incredibly low volume.

05:10
when you're trying to do outreach marketing, right? So number one, have them define with clarity on what a prospect means, what a lead means, what a booking means, what a qualification means, right? So when we're thinking about qualifications, when you talk about a qualified lead, what does a qualified lead mean to our company at Pima? Yeah, when we're looking at a qualified lead, it's somebody that fits the parameters that our client has already set up in front. So we're looking at things like what industry.

05:39
Is it the right company size? Is it the right title of the prospect? Are they the CEO or the decision maker? So we have certain parameters that we set up upfront and we make sure that when we define a qualified lead, it's a person that hits those parameters. And that next step is that they've said yes to a call, they've shown that interest. Because if there's no interest, as you're mentioning, they just become a prospect. And so I think it's important both on the side of

06:08
asking the right question to the lead generation company on what those definitions mean, but also as the entrepreneur, as the person that's purchasing the service to make sure I have a clear understanding on what a lead, a booked appointment or prospect is as well. So I can challenge those definitions if they don't line up with what I understand to be true. So we do have another episode called marketing for dummies. We're going to link it in the show notes. Go back and listen to that because we break down.

06:36
every single marketing definition that you need to know in detail so that you have good information when you're going out to prospect or to look for a Legion agency. Yeah. And number one thing is that I see happen all the time is just people selling terms and mixing what the terms are and then making it look like they're delivering a lot when they're not. And even things like, be very careful with this. We're going to do 10,000 emails.

07:04
month, which by the way, that's actually not a lot for email marketing. We're going to do 10,000 emails a month. But then you look at it and they're sending 10 emails to each person. So they're only sending out to 1000 people 10 times. So you got to also really get a clarity on each part of the funnel. Like any numbers that they show you, ask them to break those down for you. What does that mean? A lot of times what will happen is when you're working with a legit company, they'll be able to bring.

07:33
data to the table. Yes. Like we've done 100 million reach outs over the last six years. We do about 5 million a month. So if somebody's talking to us, we can bring data to the table from similar campaigns, similar clients we've worked with. And so make sure that anyone you're talking to can actually bring data to the table and show you what each number in the funnel looks like. Because that's where you're going to really see the difference between hypey front end big promises and numbers. And when you start to dig into those numbers.

08:02
you're gonna start seeing which ones actually have substance and which ones are like, oh, this person actually doesn't know what they're doing. That takes us really well into the second question, which is what metrics of success are you tracking? Or what is the most important metric of success? Yeah, so when you're looking at this, you wanna, it was very similar to what we were saying just a second ago, is this person should have clarity on the metrics of the entire funnel, right?

08:31
I understand from how many people we reach out to, to when they become a client. I know what every metric is in our company. Every step from when they show interest to the lead to book process to the show rate process to how many calls we need to do in ourselves process to how many follow. I understand every single metric. So ask them what are the critical success metrics in the lead generation and I would even say client acquisition funnel.

09:00
Right? Because the whole only reason why you're getting leads is because you want to get clients. Get an understanding of the way that they see the entire client acquisition process and ask them what are their key metrics? Because that's another place where you're going to start seeing, oh, is what they're talking about hype or is it real? If they have really good understanding on each critical metric in the client acquisition process, you're going to have more clarity on whether this company knows what they're talking about or not. And on that, ask them what is the one or two.

09:29
most important metrics that they look at for a successful lead generation or client acquisition funnel. What are a few of those metrics that we track or that people should be asking about so that they're in the know as well? What are a few of those data points? Number one is understanding of the people that you reach out to, how many of those are going to turn into a lead on average? And then ask them to tell you for the kind of meetings you want. What's less relevant?

09:58
And let me really emphasize this. What's less relevant when you're hiring a lead generation company is if they have worked with an exact company like yours before that it's the old joke of, well sir, have you ever worked with spinach companies? Well, yeah we do, here's a case study. Well, was it a frozen spinach company? Actually, here's a frozen spinach case study. Well, did they do organic door to door? Like no sir, I didn't do that. So don't over obsess about whether they've worked with the exact person of you. Yeah.

10:26
What you wanna obsess on is can they get the meetings with the type of clients you wanna meet with? Now of course, if they have great case studies, that's cool, but what I wanna know if I'm hiring a lead generation company and like say I'm going after CMOs of $200 million companies and bigger, I wanna know that this company can show me a list of meetings they've got with CMOs of $200 million, $1 billion, $500 million companies.

10:56
because that is the number one most important thing. So number one is how many people are you reaching out to and then what is your lead rate to get meetings with the people I wanna meet with? Oh, and can you show me an example list of meetings you've got with my target audience? So that's gonna be the first off, how many people are you reaching out to is a really important metric, and then out of all those people you reach out to, how many of those are gonna turn into a meeting? Based off of your historical data,

11:25
with the exact meetings that I want. Because what you'll have a lot of times that'll happen where we'll get 15 to 20 meetings a month, and then they're making that blanket promise to everybody because they've done it for some of their buddies and they did it for themselves, and wow, this works pretty good, but it doesn't work for everybody. You wanna see that they know the lead rates, like specific lead rates for the type of client that you wanna get meetings with. That's gonna be a critical one.

11:53
There's more pieces in the process, but I would say those are, when I'm looking at hiring a lead generation company, those ones are really critical. When we wanna think about the entire client acquisition process, just kind of see what their understanding is about the full thing. We are obsessed with getting the meetings to show up. It doesn't matter if you get the right meetings if they don't show up. A lot of times people come to us, they're only getting 30, 40% show rate. We also have 80, 85, 90, 95% show rate. So you could ask them,

12:23
What's the show rates on the meetings that you set? Two, I would add to those data points. If you really want to take it to that next level, if somebody's doing say outreach marketing or email marketing, having a look at what their open rates are, that's going to be a very, very good indication on whether or not they are really good at deliverability. Do they understand that market as well, right? Because our open rates can range from.

12:47
42 we even had an 80% campaign to 40 to 80 percent 86 That was last week. One of our internal campaigns is cold emails. It's crazy percent open rate. It's crazy So if you find a company that's you know doing 10 to 20 percent open rates, or they're not even sure what those metrics are That's a red flag so you can have a look at that and then I'd say the next one is the response rates Right that is gonna tell you that they know how to reach out to your audience. They understand

13:16
what will make your audience respond as well. So I think those two additional metrics or data points have a look at what the company says about open rates and response rates in addition to lead rates and show rates as well. Big time, big time for email, huge for email because I was just doing the math on this with our head of sales the other day and I was like, okay, so if I go out and I buy data from say like Zoom info and I get 10,000 prospects for $10,000 a month.

13:46
I'm paying a dollar per prospect. We broke down on what it cost per opened email for Pima and it is 67 cents to $1 per open email if you have us on a retainer because our open rates are so good that it costs you the same or less money to get an open email with your prospect outsourcing to Pima than it does for you just to go buy a contact from a normal data house.

14:14
And so when you think about open rates, there's so much work that goes into getting a cold email to work. Most cold email companies are doing 20%, 15%. I mean, I had people come in to me like, we can't get a past 8% open rate on cold email. And a lot of that is because it's deliverability and there's just so much complexity behind that. But yeah, for sure, open rates is such a critical thing to ask. And if they're not doing at least 40%, 50% open rates, where they could show you that they actually get 40%, 50% open rates.

14:43
Do not hire them because a lot of your marketing dollars is going to be wasted. Yeah. Going into the spam folder. That moves us really nicely into the third one, which you kind of touched on, but we want to highlight is for them to show you proof of meetings that they've gotten in the past or leads that they've generated in the past that fit your target audience or the type of leads that you want to get, because it's very easy for somebody to say that they could generate the leads and to have the best copy and the best sales, the best marketing.

15:11
But if they don't have that physical, tangible proof that they can do it, you're actually putting yourself and your business at risk because you don't know investing with this company may not produce a return at all. Hey there, we're going to be coming out with a lot of new content to help you level up in all areas of life and business. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you're listening so that you get immediate updates as soon as a new show is released.

15:41
Here's how to look at it. Just role play with me and you're the prospect and I'm the salesperson. I'll be somebody that doesn't know what they're doing like, but I'm just going to say whatever I can say to try to get your business. Can you get meetings with executives in the HR space? Oh yeah, yeah we do it all the time, you know, 100% no problem. Okay, do you have proof? Can you show me examples of leads that you've generated in the HR space? I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm sure we could, we could figure that. You're gonna see them squirm.

16:11
You're going to see them squirm. It's going to be like that. And here's the thing is if they create false data to show you, they're actually breaking the law and they can get thrown in jail. They can have their businesses shut down by the Federal Trade Commission if they're showing you fake data. So you got to make sure you're asking for the proof. Like if somebody comes on and they're like, hey, we need meetings with CMOs of this size companies. We have so much examples that I'm not going to...

16:41
I'm going to hide their emails. Like I'm not going to show you a booking list from a client with the private information, but our team will be like, yeah, sure, cool. Here's one of our clients and here's the size of the companies. Here's their titles. Here's the dates that they were booked. And these are all real live bookings that we're getting for clients right now. We can show you that data. And if somebody can't show you that data, what will happen is when you ask them, can you get meetings with them? Oh yeah, absolutely. Can you show me examples of bookings?

17:08
that you've gotten, like, can you show me a booking sheet from a client? They're going to squirm, they're going to say stuff like, oh, well, you know, that's private information. Dude, you can hide the email, you can hide the last name and show a client the booking link. So make sure that you have real-life proof because it doesn't matter if they've worked with another SaaS company or another whatever. What matters more than whether they know how to work with your type of company is do they know how to get meetings with your type of client? Yeah. Right?

17:36
If you have somebody that knows how to get meetings with CEOs of 10,000 employee companies, it's a really hard meeting to get. And if I can show you a list of a hundred meetings we've gotten with, with Fortune 100 executives, then that shows proof that that company, that lead generation company knows how to get in with those kinds of targets. So we've seen just over the last three, four, five years, and it's probably happened even before that lead generation agency is popping up.

18:03
left and right, because as you're mentioning in the beginning, it's really easy to start a Legion company. You get a software, you take a course online. There's just so many that are popping up left and right. And I think one thing that's super important for prospects to ask a Legioneration agencies is proof of industry credentials. What have you done in the industry or what proof do you have?

18:26
that you are an established or reputable agency in the space because it is very difficult nowadays to distinguish a Legion company that's just, you know, here today, gone tomorrow from a legitimate business in the space. And it's something that we have to overcome every day with our prospects because of how saturated the industry is and how cloudy and noisy it is. It's something that we have to overcome every day. So I think asking that question upfront is really powerful and it helps you kind of

18:55
sift through the noise. I mean, just right now, just what's super buzzy is creating irresistible offers. Like, an offer's so good that people would feel whatever, saying no to it, they feel dumb saying no to it, which is true, but it's also because it's so popular and trendy, what people will do is like, you'll have somebody that's brand new to the space. Say that maybe they were an employee somewhere and they went out, they wanted to start their own lead generation business because they saw like a guru course on Facebook and they're like, okay.

19:21
I'm gonna start my own lead generation company and become rich and drink margaritas on the beach. And then they create like, then they get trained on how to sell it. They get trained on how to pitch it. They get trained on how to close it. And they create like this promise, like so good that you feel stupid saying no. So on the outside, if you're not careful, it'll look like, oh, this person is legit and they can look good because there's so many training programs out there that train you how to go from nothing.

19:48
to having your own lead generation or your own digital marketing business, which is fine if, you know, it's cool. Like, I'm not hating on people that are doing it, but where it gets bad is when they're making promises that they cannot fulfill on. And that happens a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And a lot of times these are people that become good at sales because they go through really good training programs on how to sell the product, but they don't know how to fulfill it. And one of the easiest ways to distinguish between are these people legit or are they just,

20:18
really good at sales and they have a really compelling sales process is understanding industry credentials, like third-party credentials, like show me proof of the industry saying, yes, these people are legitimate. So, I mean, look at, you know, like the success magazines, the Forbes, the entrepreneurs, the Inc 5000s, like all of like the industry standard, the...

20:44
companies that will give awards to successful businesses, best places to work, fastest growing companies. Do they have any of those? Or is most of what they're creating just kind of hypey website promises where there's no third party to validate like whether what they're actually doing is authentic and genuine or not? Having that third party validation gives a company kind of that stamp of approval so it's not just how awesome they say they are.

21:12
I mean, even testimonials or reviews on things like Google and trust pilots, I think those are, can also act as that stamp of approval because it allows you to see how their customers engage with them and what customers are saying about what it's like to work with them as well. And that takes us into the final question to ask when you are hiring a B2B lead generation agency, and that is how scalable is your solution? How scalable is it?

21:40
Well, what's critical here, because we have a lot of people that'll talk to our sales team and say, hey, look, we have a really good provider and we're getting great leads. You know, we're doing however many, you know, millions of revenue a month or a year, whatever, wherever they're at. But we can't scale it. You know, we're internally we have SDRs internally and we're doing super good. Our company is really healthy. But we've had a we've had a cap. We can't go beyond. So what's really important.

22:07
when you're hiring a B2B lead generation company is to ask about how much they can scale. Because when you start thinking about, hey, if this works really well, then we're gonna wanna double it, triple it, 10X it. And so the partner you're about to work with, when you hit the success and when it starts working, can they scale? Can they double, triple, 10X with you? Because when you're thinking long-term, it doesn't matter if you get one solution working if six months from now,

22:36
when you're ready to scale, you're gonna have to go find another solution to scale you. Just even simple things like LinkedIn, like if they're limited to just, you know, using like your personal LinkedIn profiles, that unless you have a really large team and your whole team is willing to use their LinkedIn profiles, I wouldn't hire them because they're gonna be limited to the size of your team to scale on that channel. So understanding how big they can scale you long term is critical. And remember, when they say...

23:04
As much as you want, as big as you want. Ask questions, great. How big is my pool size? Okay, how are you gonna reach that whole pool size? Show me the strategies that you're gonna do to reach that whole pool size. Because when you get past the hype of, of course we can go as big as you want, you start to realize it actually is incredibly hard to scale big on B2B lead generation. I mean, it's one thing we've obsessed with, how to scale big. It's.

23:33
very, very hard. So you want to understand if that person has the skill set, the operations and the understanding of how to scale big for your B2B Legion. Awesome. So scalability is definitely a question that you want to ask about because that also gives you an indication into how they actually scaled with other companies before, or are you going to start to reach the limits of what is possible with a certain channel? And maybe you're okay with that. I think there's some companies that,

24:01
only want to scale to a certain point and they understand that they're going to reach the limits and they're going to have to tap into another channel. But asking those questions upfront to a lead gen agency actually allows you to know how far you can go with that partner or not, or will you have to down the line say tap into another channel. So those were the five questions that you absolutely want to ask if you are hiring a B2B lead generation agency. So remember you want them to define what a lead.

24:31
prospect or booking is, any terms that they're using in the sales process, make sure you have a very clear definition and understanding of what they mean by every single term. Next, you want to ensure that you are clear on the success metrics that they are tracking, understand what they mean by open rates or response rates, what their lead percentages are, and any other data points that they are looking for as success metrics. You want to make sure that you understand those and that's

25:00
You also understand what the most important success metrics are for that company. Next, you want to make sure that you have proof that they can actually secure leads or meetings with the people that you want to meet with. Don't get obsessed on if they can do it exactly for your niche or your specific company, focus more on can they get you leads or meetings with the people you want to meet with. Number four is make sure that the company has proof of industry credentials.

25:30
You want to have third party validation and stamps of approval to ensure that you are working with a legitimate company. And last but not least, you want to make sure you are clear on scalability. Ask the B2B Legion company how scalable their solution is so that when you start to scale and your business scales, you know, if they can scale with you. Five points are really critical because I mean, I've easily done a thousand sales calls.

25:57
work with so many teams, just over and over and over and over again. The vast majority of people that come to our agency have been burnt by two, three, four other lead generation agencies before. I'm telling you, 90% of the companies that have come to us over the years have been burned before. If you use those five questions, if you dig into those five questions, you're going to do okay. Like you're going to be setting yourself up for success. So make sure.

26:25
to ask all those questions next time you're interviewing for a B2B regeneration company. And remember, domination is not a destination, it's a way of life. Stay with me.