I'm currently carrying around a spreadsheet of over one thousand 'leads' provided to me by my ever so helpful colleagues in marketing. On the face of it then you might think that I am one of the luckiest salespeople alive and probably recession proof ?! WRONG!!
As the CEO pointed out recently, one measure of an effective marketing team is the number of so called 'leads' that get accepted and converted into opportunities by the salesteam. Trouble is, many 'leads' consist of the following :
- the name of someone, somewhere in a large company.
- a person who stumbled across your website recently.
- someone who has registered for a conference about some 'hot' industry topic.
- an org chart purchased at huge expense by your company.
- the name of someone your boss heard about during a trip to the races or during a boozy lunch.
- a company name on the wall of a customer's reception area !!!
Blimely its true, we sales people have leads coming out of our ears! Sadly, Marketing will continue to ask why is it when they are so amazing at their jobs that the sales dept. cannot convert their high quality leads into sales?!
I was once interviewed by a senior marketing person in the name of 'better communication'. "And where do you get your leads from, if not from Marketing", she said. I thought for a minute and then realised that it was only fair to enlighten her. "Well I make sure that I make it part of my normal working day, prospecting I mean".
And then I went on, "You see that window over there", pointing I explained," its the most valuable window in the building". " Each morning I open it to let the fresh air in and to my delight, leads come floating in on angel wings, one after the other they land on my desk". "So you see, all I have to do really is ring them up and ask for the order"!!!
My colleague did'nt believe me of course...
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