Sales Prospecting Perspectives

At AG we take pride in what we do. In my biased opinion, every lead we deliver to our clients meets the criteria of what every hungry sales guy/girl should be looking for.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, both marketing and sales historically have difficulty meeting in the middle on a definition of an actionable sales lead. IF they can come up with an agreed upon definition (which could take months with some sales and marketing teams) then we can determine when certain leads should be transitioned to the outside team. At that point it should no longer be up for debate.

Based upon input that we’ve received over the years from a multitude of clients together we’ve come up with what we perceive as the key elements of a quality sales lead.

• Pass Down Process: How you got to this contact.
• Current Solution Overview: Outlining of their current solution/process.
• Pains/Needs: What they are facing, and what they would like to change. 
• Decision Making Process: Who is involved? From C-Level on down.
• Budget: Do they have it? If not, can it be allocated if your service/technology is compelling enough?
• Timeframe: When is the change going to be made? (If more than 12 Months -set a task to nurture)

Alright, so now let’s assume everyone is in agreement. Marketing loves sales and sales loves marketing. Marketing then begins sending leads over sales assuming they’ll start hammering them. A few weeks goes by and the marketing team begins to grow concerned because there seems to be little to no buzz around the “hot” new qualified leads the sales team is receiving. Marketing then checks their CRM assuming there has been a significant amount of activity thrown into the leads. To their surprise, they see that only one…I repeat one call had been placed into the hot prospect. Guess what…most likely the love is now gone in wonderful marketing and sales land.

While this may be only a small example of why the love is so elusive between sales and marketing folks, it seems to be far too common. Coming from the gritty cold calling trenches, just one call isn’t good enough. My opinion on this may be skewed a bit since it typically took an average of 15 calls to identify the decision maker, generate interest and get them qualified.

Decision makers are busy. Mr. Outside rep with the bloated ego should know this. Your inside rep may have set a scheduled call for them to connect, but there is a possibility that something could have come up that took priority. Just because the qualified opp wasn’t sitting there anxiously awaiting your call, doesn’t mean they should be qualified out. (IT TAKES WORK SON!!) Don’t assume that they aren’t interested because they didn’t pick up the phone the first time around. If the inside sales rep shared the same mind set, then you wouldn’t have any leads to work on…let alone any actionable opportunities to transition to forecast.

So what’s the next step? Though you may have a consensus on what a qualified lead is, how much effort should outside sales put in before it is sent back to inside sales/marketing?

Next week I’ll discuss our experience and suggestions around a process for lead follow up once a lead has been transitioned to the outside team. Stay tuned...