Thursday, February 26, 2009

Are Sales Leads worth anything anymore?

When corporate offices are trying to help salespeople sell, they give them lists of leads; companies have sprung up in all industries selling lists of leads. You can buy lead lists sliced and diced any number of ways – want to know the names of all the females living in Sandusky who have 2 kids and a household income between $36,700 and $63,700? We can get that.

But lead lists on their own aren’t worth anything. Sure they give you people to call and if you get paid by the call, I guess they’re worth something. But salespeople get paid to sell, not call and unless someone buys something the list is worthless.

So how can you tell if that housewife wants your widget?

Marketing departments often perceive their number one priority to be finding likely buyers. In other words, it’s all about the Who. It’s easy to get the Who (even if it’s not the right Who).

What about the Why? Why do people buy? In individual settings, lots of studies have been done trying to ascertain consumer buying patterns and motivations but how much do you (or your salespeople) know about why corporate customers buy the particular type of widget you’re peddling? After all, in business settings, there are a lot of forces at work in making purchasing decisions – the customer’s need and budget, sure, but also historical vendor relationships, internal political struggles, the firm’s willingness (or resistance) and ability to change, and the overall corporate environment. Some of these things are easier to ascertain than others, either by doing research or asking pertinent questions but some, like the political and relationship questions are harder to ascertain.

And failing to get those details can, unfortunately, derail a potential sale at the 11th hour.

All of this theoretically falls under the heading of “qualifying the lead” and even lists of “qualified” leads aren’t typically going to get into that level of detail.

So what are you gonna do? Well if plain old lists of leads are worthless, lists of “qualified” leads are at least a starting place and to the extent that the marketing department can further drill down, at least on the need, budget and timing issues, the likelihood of converting that lead to a successful sale goes up exponentially.

The real work of getting to the Why (or Why Not) comes from relationship-building, usually on the part of the sales rep, which is how it should be.

After all, although it’d be great, it’s not marketing’s job to give us customers ready to sign on the dotted line – it to give us potential customers who are ready and willing to begin building a relationship with us. And if they can do that, it’s not worthless at all.