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Finding Good Leads, Today’s Toughest Sales Challenge
July 23, 2009
“What’s your toughest sales challenge?” The sales leaders, CEOs and presidents we ask this question tell us right now it’s finding qualified leads. Here are the reasons they say it is so difficult.
· Their reps don’t have / make time.
· Their reps are not good at prospecting.
· Prospects not interested in talking.
· Lead lists and databases are inaccurate.
· Poor marketing.
We find it is usually because no one in the company has created the lead development strategy or is ignoring critical new tools and best practices. No strategy. No plan. No leads.
Ensuring qualified lead flow is often low priority, and sometimes ignored completely, by sales leaders. (Or they assume marketing is handling it). Instead, the sales leader’s priorities in most companies are the high visibility often reactive roles they are asked to perform. Think of your business. Is your sales leader your top closer on big deals, first responder to difficult client situations, chief presenter at internal deal reviews and primary negotiator during finance’s revenue planning sessions? If yes, who is planning, managing and measuring the ‘above the funnel’ activities like lead generation?
The answer to this question is that most sales leaders expect their front line / outside sales teams are performing their own lead identification, qualification and cultivation. It is not uncommon for companies to assume sales reps should – and are – developing leads along with their other responsibilities for creating and managing opportunities, closing deals and negotiating contracts. It is a poor practice that fails for three reasons.
1. Phone-based lead development and cultivation are unique skills, very different from developing face-to-face rapport with C-level prospects and managing big deals.
2. For high quota reps, lead generation is the first activity to drop when large pursuits come along or complex negotiations are needed to close a deal.
3. Increasingly, the companies which are deploying new practices, tools and technologies for lead generation are out-executing the old model and finding those prospects who are buying.
A significant evolution is occurring in respect to lead generation and is redefining both ownership and approach for this critical activity. Marketing driven solutions wrapped in 2.0 technology and smart labor models have become best practice. These solutions are highly impactful when well designed and smartly executed and far more measurable, effective and lower cost than old approaches.
Comments? We are always open to feedback and love sharing best-practices.
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2 Responses to “Finding Good Leads, Today’s Toughest Sales Challenge”
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Great post and right on the mark. Interestingly, a few months ago, one of my largest clients (multi-billion dollar corporation with a salesforce of thousands) polled one of their divisions asking what they saw as their largest sales challenge. The reasons ranged from external issues (like the economy) to branding issues (going from a product company to a “solutions” company)… But the two reasons cited most often as the biggest challenges were a lack of time and resources to develop a strong pipeline and the inability to reach the C-suite or decision maker.
My firm helps this corporation unlock the capacity of their frontline sales people by handling the “top of the funnel” lead generation and appointment setting activity, ultimately giving their sales people more selling time with qualified prospects.
By bringing the sales people into the process at a later stage (meaning when the prospect is qualified and interested) means they can spend more time on high pay-off activity and less time chasing leads. Now that we are their “prospecting engine” delivering qualified leads, this particular client has been able to downsize their sales team because they don’t need as many. They’ve kept the really good ones, and now these top performers can spend the vast majority of their time in front of prospects and closing deals.
I’m seeing more and more top performing, forward thinking companies move to this outsourcing model.
Tonya, I definitely agree with your comments and the findings from your client. Going with a specialized firm for lead cultivation is absolutely the right model for so many companies, particularly those operating in the complex sales environment.