LinkedIn lead generation agencies: To outsource or not to outsource?

According to Salary.com, the average cost of hiring a salesperson in 2022 is around $60K a year without benefits in the United States. If you combine that with tertiary costs like recruitment and onboarding, you might be looking at first-year expenses that exceed $150K.

Even if you have the financial resources for an in-house sales department, not all sales reps have the necessary expertise to succeed in a targeted market like LinkedIn. But, LinkedIn is a primary source for B2B lead generation — something you don’t want to sleep on.

So, if you’re an early-stage startup or small business, outsourcing lead generation to a third-party agency is an entirely viable option. However, it may not always be the right choice. Not every B2B business will benefit from hiring a LinkedIn lead generation company. 

In this guide to outsourcing LinkedIn lead generation, we’ll cover various options and scenarios to determine if employing a third-party agency to get new leads is the right call for you.

LinkedIn agencies: What are they and when should you hire one?

Let’s start with a fundamental question: what is a lead generation agency? Think of it as an on-demand sales team that can help you acquire potential leads and turn them into closed deals. The breadth of services offered by a lead generation agency differs from company to company. But, it usually starts with scouring a platform for quality leads using pre-defined criteria. Their goal is to get you qualified leads to close using targeted outreach. 

Of course, successful lead generation strategies differ significantly between various platforms. What works in email marketing or cold calling may not work for social media. That’s why B2B companies look for lead generation agencies that focus specifically on LinkedIn.

Why focus on LinkedIn? Because of all the social networking platforms out there, LinkedIn attracts the most significant chunk of key decision-makers from businesses all over the world. As a professional network, it’s also the kind of place people visit to make purchase decisions about their organization, as opposed to casual social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Just like any other platform, there’s a certain technique to selling on LinkedIn. From optimizing your LinkedIn profile to framing B2B outreach messages, there’s a step-by-step system to get the most out of your lead gen campaign. Want to learn more? Check out our LinkedIn lead generation strategy guide.

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The advantage of hiring a LinkedIn lead gen agency is that they already have the necessary systems in place and are intimately familiar with the platform’s best practices. So, when should you consider outsourcing? Here are some common scenarios where hiring a lead generation agency is the best choice:

• You don’t have the budget for an in-house sales team.
• Your sales team doesn’t have the resources for lead generation.
• Your sales reps don’t have LinkedIn-specific expertise.
• LinkedIn is eating up all your sales team’s resources. 

If one of the above scenarios applies to you, you might consider looking into a third-party lead generation service. Provided that hiring a lead generation agency is the right call for your organization, here are a few tips and strategies to help you choose the best one:

• Always look for quality over quantity. Agencies with a higher cost per lead may seem like a wrong choice at first, but they can make up for it with a fantastic conversion rate.
• Search for agencies that make realistic promises instead of providing cookie-cutter estimates on the results they can deliver.
• Check an agency’s website for reviews and testimonials. The more it has, the less likely it is to offer churn-and-burn services without recurring support. 
• If you require niche services, look for an agency that specializes in your industry and market as opposed to taking a generalized approach.
• Make sure that the agency complies with the appropriate data protection laws, such as GDPR and CCPA. Ask how it sources contact information and whether it asks leads for proper consent.

Advantages

• Reduced Workload: Hiring a lead generation agency can free your sales team up for other essential customer-facing tasks, such as outreach and closing. Your existing sales team doesn’t have to be bogged down by a single platform.
• Cost-Effectiveness: LinkedIn agencies, while still expensive, have far fewer overhead and recurring costs than hiring a full-time employee. You can gain access to an entire team for the salary equivalent of a single salesperson.
• Technical Expertise: Most of these agencies come from years of lead-gen expertise and platform experience with LinkedIn. They offer niche solutions that are more effective than most in-house sales teams.

Disadvantages

• Reduced Control: You have far less control over your sales funnel when working with an external lead generation agency. This leads to many missed opportunities for gathering customer data and performing sales optimization.
• Inconsistent Messaging: Agencies may often ignore your brand’s internal guidelines for customer communication, leading to inconsistent messaging at the earliest stages of the sales process.
• Economic Burden: If you have an in-house sales department already in place, hiring an agency can easily strain your company budget. Using sales enablement tools to automate lead generation might be a much more cost-effective solution in this case.

CoPilot AI: The best in-house alternative for lead generation

LinkedIn agencies can help you scale your sales efforts with qualified leads for a fraction of the price of an in-house sales team. However, they also leave you with far less control over your sales process and place an unnecessary burden on companies with existing sales departments. 

Luckily, there’s another option — sales automation. With the right tools to empower your sales team, you can keep lead generation in-house while freeing up your existing workload and increasing your number of closed deals. 

CoPilot AI is an intelligent prospecting dashboard that uses machine learning to optimize your lead generation process on LinkedIn. From one-on-one strategy sessions to data-driven connection messages, CoPilot AI offers everything to help you scale your prospecting efforts without burning a hole in your wallet. 

Our proprietary algorithm has analyzed over 1,000,000 interactions to discover the best way to connect with people on LinkedIn. It offers contextual suggestions to improve your messaging and build high-quality relationships with your target audience. Every business also gets access to a dedicated account manager who provides guidance and input to help you improve your LinkedIn strategy.

But that’s not everything. With a highly intuitive dashboard that can give any CRM software a run for its money, CoPilot AI also provides a single point of truth to help you track and analyze your LinkedIn conversations. You can schedule follow-ups and automate nurture campaigns — all from the same dashboard!

Advantages

• Simpler Onboarding: Onboarding a new lead generation agency can be a very involved process. CoPilot AI makes it easier for you to get started.
• One-on-One Strategy: A dedicated account manager provides one-on-one coaching to improve your LinkedIn lead generation strategy.
• Targeted Messaging: CoPilot AI’s proprietary algorithm provides highly relevant suggestions to help you send more personalized messages to new prospects.
• Sales CRM: The dashboard also serves as a sales CRM for your LinkedIn campaign, allowing sales teams to easily track and analyze communications.
• Reasonable Price: Even at the lower end of the spectrum, agencies cost several thousands of dollars a month. CoPilot AI subscriptions start at just $234/mo.

Disadvantages

• In-House Requirements: You’ll find a lot to love in CoPilot AI, whether you’re an enterprise organization or a sales team of one. But it can’t wholly replace your in-house sales department.
• Niche Solutions: CoPilot AI is a platform specializing in LinkedIn. If you’d like to generate leads through other platforms like cold emails or cold calling, you may want to consider employing additional services.

How to choose the right lead generation strategy for you

Outsourcing can be an excellent way to scale your lead generation efforts without investing in an in-house sales team, but there are caveats. Without complete control over your processes, you risk missing out on vital sales opportunities and losing access to precious customer data.

LinkedIn lead generation agencies aren’t for everyone. As you prepare for this difficult decision, here are a few questions to ask yourself to determine if outsourcing is right for your business:

• Do you already have an in-house sales department?
• Do you have the financial resources to employ a lead generation agency?
• Are you okay with transferring control of your sales process to a third party?
• Do you have an urgent need to generate more leads in the short term?

Depending on the resources you have, you may even want to combine the two strategies — automating certain parts of your sales process and outsourcing others. Not all your sales tasks can be outsourced, but the right tools can make your sales process a lot more efficient.

Launch your lead gen efforts into hyperdrive with CoPilot AI

Whether or not you choose to outsource parts of your lead generation process, CoPilot AI is an excellent tool for empowering sales teams working with LinkedIn. For a fraction of the cost of hiring a lead generation agency or a full-time sales professional, you receive state-of-the-art features guaranteed to make your prospecting efforts much smarter.

But don’t take our word for it! CoPilot AI has been recognized as a G2 Leader in Lead Capture software. A big part of that is owed to five-star reviews from several of our 2,000+ customers, many of whom have successfully reached prospects from organizations like Salesforce, PayPal, and Microsoft.

Ready to learn more about CoPilot AI? Book a demo today and see for yourself!