What's A Lead?
With a single sales call costing $400 to $4,000, you can’t afford too many dead-end leads…It’s no wonder this topic seems to mystify more than most. At it’s best a “lead” is the beginning of a beautiful, productive, profitable sales relationship! But at its worst, it’s a source of frustration and aggravation that creates expensive activity leading to an unsuccessful result.
You can see the reason for the mystification. In one company leads are “sales seeds.” Just water them and they grow into beautiful sales welcomed by everyone in the organization. In another company they are a source of constant irritation –– people that don’t really want to buy… and something that must be followed up and reported on ad nausea.
The central confusion revolves around a key distinction that is often left out of the conversation and that distinction is “qualified.” Everyone sees it differently. Marketing thinks they are producing great leads. Sales people think they are getting junk!
Friend and colleague Winton Churchill, one of the country’s foremost experts on lead generation, identifies three fundamental attributes necessary for a lead to be a qualified (and then name two additional vital characteristics that come into play).
Number 1… The right person. Either the person that will make the decision to buy your solution… or the person who works for that person who has responsibility for finding the solution.
Many people wrongly focus exclusively on the decision maker. Often times that person is too busy to invest the time to understand your solution. Finding their “deputy” who is specifically charged with finding and implementing the solution is preferred.
Number 2… The right sized client. You want a client who has a problem that is costly enough to justify the cost of your solution. If you have a $500,000+ material handling solution, you probably won’t and can’t sell that to someone who has a $30,000 materials handing problem.
Number 3…The right mind set. The old saying goes, “Nobody ever lost their job buying IBM!” There is a group of buyers who will never buy your solution unless you are the market leader. If you are not, it is important to filter out those uneducable buyers.
Once you have identified leads with these characteristics you want to further qualify them by the following two characteristics.
Characteristic #1. Stage in cycle. You want clients that can produce business in your lifetime! While Winton firmly believes that an educational approach is the right one, he points out that there are limits to the quality and quantity of education you can provide. Most sales people never approach those limits.
In days past you wanted to get in “as early as possible…” sometimes months or even years (in the case of million-plus capital equipment) before a purchasing decision is made.
Today, the goal is to get in early enough to influence the decision making process, but not so early you have to sell the deal through several product cycles.
Characteristic #2. Action oriented. Why? You want the prospect to be calling you back to move the sale foreword rather than you engaging in all the “commando tactics” to “catch” a reluctant prospect on the phone: calling early, calling late, or calling during lunch when a secretary or administrator is likely to be away from the sentry post.
A relatively small number of the people in positions of power (particularly large corporations) are action oriented. How do you find them? Interestingly, Winton has addressed this question and perfected a solution for getting them to “self-identify.”
Conclusion: Looking for these 3 attributes and 2 characteristics will help minimize the wasted activity and frustration of the dreaded “bogus” lead. No two situations are alike.
Didn't read anything that resonates with your situation? I’ll provide additional suggestions that will better fit your circumstances.
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