Choosing a lead generation company is difficult because the thing being sold is a promise about the future, and everyone’s deck promises the same future. The useful signals are not in the pitch; they are in what the company is willing to show you and what it declines to.
Here are nine we would want checked on us, or on any lead generation company you are considering.
1. They ask who your best customer is, early
Good work by a lead generation company starts with a narrow target, so the first conversation should include questions about which deals closed fastest and which went nowhere. A company that takes a brief and starts immediately is optimising for its own start date.
2. The lead generation company will show a dashboard
Not a case study, which is a story the company wrote about itself, but the actual tool with the actual numbers. We publish walkthroughs of our own four accounts for this reason: 5,076 LinkedIn invitations produced 1,086 replies and 370 booked sales calls, and anyone can watch where each figure comes from.
The ratio matters more than the totals. Replies are plentiful and booked calls are not, so a proposal implying otherwise deserves a question.
3. The definition of a lead is in writing
A form fill is not a lead. A booked call with someone who can sign is a lead. Agree it before the contract, and agree what happens to a no-show, because that is where optimistic reporting lives.
4. They tell you what they need from you
Product answers, a calendar that is actually open, someone to take the calls, and a decision when a message needs approving. A lead generation company that claims to need nothing from you is describing a campaign that will run on generic copy.
5. Compliance comes up without you raising it
Email and calling are regulated, and the rules differ by market. The United States Federal Trade Commission’s CAN-SPAM compliance guide is the baseline for email, and a company working across borders should be able to say how it handles the equivalents elsewhere.
6. A good lead generation company names what it will not do
Expertise shows up as exclusion. A company that offers every channel at once has either a very large team or a very flexible definition of the word offer.
7. The lead generation company reporting shows the bad weeks
Ask to see a report from a month that went badly. Every real account has one. What you are testing is whether the reporting was built to inform you or to reassure you, and you can only tell by looking at a bad month.
8. There is a stop condition
A cost per booked call above which this does not make sense for your business, agreed in advance and written down. A company that cannot imagine recommending less spend is paid in a way that conflicts with your result.
9. You can speak to a client who left
Uncomfortable and informative. References who stayed tell you what works, while a client who left tells you how the lead generation company behaves when things go wrong, which is the part you need.
Lead generation company questions we are asked
What does a lead generation company cost?
Either a monthly retainer or a price per booked meeting, and the second looks cleaner than it is, because the definition of a meeting then decides your invoice. Whichever model you pick, settle the definition first.
Should a lead generation company use our domain or their own?
Their own sending infrastructure for cold volume, with your brand in the message. Burning your primary domain’s reputation is a cost nobody prices in the proposal.
How soon should a lead generation company produce meetings?
First meetings inside a month, a fair verdict at sixty days. Earlier than that you are judging setup rather than performance.
What none of these tell you
Whether the market wants what you sell. If the offer is unproven, outbound will produce conversations that go quiet, and the cause will look like the agency. So before you buy volume, be able to name three customers who bought recently and say why, because that is the brief a lead generation company actually needs.
Our B2B lead generation page sets out the sequence we run, and the four-account case study has the recordings behind every number above.
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