Lead Generation

How much do you charge for lead generation?
Lead generation costs $29.50 per hour with a qualifying agreement. Please contact us for more information. 

Who will be my contact person once my campaign is sold?
The sales rep you initially signed with will remain involved in your campaign to make sure everything is running smoothly, but you are assigned an account supervisor. That person will be in constant contact with you. Their primary job is to keep you informed on how your campaign is doing. They make sure that we are continually working together to refine the process of making your campaign successful.

Are there any setup charges?
No. We simply charge for the actual time our callers spend working on our clients’ campaigns.

How are your callers trained to know about my account?
At the beginning of each campaign, we give you up to one hour gratis to tell our callers about your product or service. You can do this via a conference call, videoconference, Skype, or in person. Following this one hour at no charge, time spent on training will be deducted from the number of hours specified in your contract.

Can I meet my callers before my campaign starts?
At the beginning of the campaign, your account supervisor will meet with you and introduce you to your callers. There is an opportunity to talk with the callers directly and to provide any training and information that you wish. If you would like to meet your callers, you may do so. All of our offices are set up with videoconferencing through Skype if you would like to see them while speaking with them.

Who is going to write, edit and then possibly revise my script if it is not working properly?
We will. You, your supervisor, and one of our writers will discuss your campaign with you and write phone and email scripts. You then read your script for approval. We offer up to two complete rewrites to get your scripts exactly how you want them to be.

What do you consider a lead?
In most cases we define a lead as someone who is interested NOW in purchasing the product or service you offer, and if your product or service has the features they need, they will buy it. We want our clients to spend time closing business, not talking with people who are just kicking the tires. But if you have a different definition, we will train our callers to produce leads to meet YOUR definition of a lead.

Can I define my own leads and set my own requirements?
Yes, of course. Our definition is whatever you define a lead to be. Each client may have different lead requirements or qualifying factors as well as different needs. We recognize that and work within those needs. To make a campaign successful, we need feedback on the leads we are providing to make sure they are as hot and closable as we think they are.

What results should I expect for leads and also for closure rates?
The numbers of leads you can expect as a percentage of the number of calls we make on your behalf will vary depending upon the quality of your list and the depth of your market. That being said, on average, most of our clients experience a qualified lead generation of between 2-4% of the number of contacts our callers make with decision makers, and our callers typically reach 10-30% of decision makers on the first call (we define a qualified lead as someone who is looking for your product or services, and if you offer the features they need, they will make a purchase). Our clients also report back to us a 10-40% closure rate on the leads we supply.

How many times will you call each company?
That will be entirely up to you, but on average it takes three to five calls to qualify and generate a lead. Up front, our goal is to reach out to as many businesses as possible, knowing that it will take those three to five calls to reach that key decision maker. We can be as vigilant as you want and go through the list follow-ups and call them as many times as you want, as long as you know that hours are being used on these calls. This will also help you have a completely scrubbed list when we are done with the campaign.

I would like potential customers to think your callers are my employees and that calls and emails are coming directly from my company. Can you do this?
You bet. Here at Link It Call Center, our call specialists can appear to your customers as though they are sitting right in your office. We simply tell callers to say they are calling from your office. We can set up a caller ID that is unique to your company. And when the call specialists send out emails, we can send them from your domain name instead of ours. There is a small monthly fee for this, which can be deducted from your paid hours.

Do I have one call specialist or many working on my campaign?
We recommend starting a campaign with two of our call specialists calling on behalf of your company. These callers are the dedicated callers for your campaign. So, for example, if your campaign requires 16 hours of calling per day, we will have the same two callers making calls for you each day.

Can I increase the number of callers working on my campaign?
Yes, of course. Our calling center jobs are in demand in the small rural communities in which we are based. We can easily scale up and add callers as needed.

What is pay-per-lead and how does it work?
Under pay-per-lead contracts, the client, in this case you, would pay only for leads delivered to you. On the surface this seems like a great deal. In fact, when Link It was testing outside call centers, we worked with some on a pay-per-lead contract basis. This failed for us. We found that almost 100% of the leads delivered under this method did not meet our definition of a viable, closable lead. We learned that any company that commits upfront to a pay-per-lead contract without any market testing or knowledge of your product or customer base is either lying or guessing about their ability to perform.

Can I do a pay-per-lead contract with you?
In general, we recommend against pay-per-lead contracts as the amount of research required to determine the viability of your marketplace and a reasonable cost per lead for all involved can be more expensive than a direct lead generation contract from our firm. If pay-per-lead had worked for us, we would be doing it for our clients, but as you can see, this wasn’t the case. We do occasionally commit to pay-per-lead contracts, but there is a set-up fee that provides enough hours for us to test your market and find out what can actually be done for lead generation for you and at what cost. Once that is done, we can mutually negotiate a price per lead based on the real-world results we have obtained for you. Please call us for full details.

Can we monitor calls?
Yes, of course. We can record all the calls that are made by your callers. At the end of each day the calls will be made available on an FTP site for your review.

How many hours should I start with for my campaign?
Our recommendation for a contract for a typical lead generation campaign is 400 hours.

Can I do a test campaign first?
Certainly. We understand that a company may want to take us on a test drive to see how things work out before committing to a large contract. For lead generation, we recommend a test of a minimum of 250 hours.

Why do you recommend that a test campaign be at least 250 hours?
In our experience, it takes a minimum of 250 hours to determine if we are generating enough leads for a good return on investment (ROI). Developing leads can require as many as half a dozen or more calls to one individual company, not to mention sending information and emails and leaving voice messages. You need a large enough sample size to determine if the campaign is a success or not. You don’t want to stop a campaign before it’s had time to prove itself. This only results in you wasting the money you’ve invested.

What if I have a different type of campaign? Does a test still involve 250 hours?
It may not. For other projects, such as list verification, announcing an event, following up on trade show cards, etc., the number of hours you’ll need directly depends on the size of your list, your event, or the number of your trade-show follow-ups. We can create a custom-size campaign to complete your project and fit within your needs. Please call us and we would be happy to discuss your project with you.

How many hours do we use each week?
In the beginning of your campaign, we try to use two callers who each work about seven hours a day to test your campaign to make sure it’s running according to plan. This only takes a few days. Once we know we’re on track, we will also know how many leads a day one caller can generate for you. We will then ask you how many leads a week you can absorb. We’ll put as many callers on your campaign to produce the number of leads you can sell.

Can I set the number of hours per week that callers work on my campaign?
We’ve learned through our marketing experience that using two callers for seven hours a day, each, enables us to determine how many leads we can expect to be generated. This testing period is critical, as you want to give your campaign a chance to prove itself. We have found that campaigns have the most success when callers have a chance to get trained and familiar with the client’s campaign and calling list. It helps when they can stay focused on a single campaign for a week without jumping around from one campaign to another. Then we can fine-tune your campaign by making adjustments to fit your schedule. If you are overwhelmed with leads, we can pull back. If you are going to be short on salespeople during a specific period, we can scale up to use more callers.

How many calls per hour are made on average?
Our callers average at least 30 calls per hour along with sending information to the decision makers.

Are the leads generated by your company exclusive to my company?
Yes, of course. The leads we generate are yours exclusively. We never give your leads to anyone else.

What if I don’t want caller ID to make the incoming call look like it’s coming from a call center?
We can customize the outgoing phone line to include your company information on the caller ID. There is a slight monthly fee for this.

How will I know that the calls are being made?
We created our own software application that provides our clients with real-time “current to-the-second” reports and statistics. This application allows you to monitor the number of calls made, the cost per lead, the percentage of contacts to calls, leads developed to contacts, and much more. To learn more about our software application and to view samples of real-time reports, please click here (“here” links to http://www.linkitcallcenter.com/index.php/reports-and-statistics-provided-during-your-campaign)

Can I monitor the result of each call?
Yes, you can. Clients can see in real-time the result of every call on their campaign, including how many leads the call center produces for them. Other reports available to include: calling campaign percentages (calls completed, messages left, etc.), a report showing how many hours used, the balance of hours remaining, the cost per lead, the total number of leads generated, and reports showing the exact status of each call made. Clients will be given a user name and password that will allow them to log into the application to view these reports, all of which are updated minute by minute in real time.

Can your company send out mailers if they are needed for my campaign?
Yes, absolutely. We have done this for a variety of customers and would be pleased to do so for you as well.

Do you have any type of guarantee? If so, what is it?
We are in effect a marketing organization, as are television stations, Google, major publications and other media outlets. Marketing is a fluid process, and neither they nor we can make hard guarantees as to results. We can show you metrics so you can see our success rate. We can also send you references that will verify how well we have worked for them.