Does the salesforce actually look at sales leads?

The ugly truth is a lot of “sales leads” go right into the trash can without even being opened.  I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count.  And at the same time they’re going in the trash, some media buyer back in marketing is listening to a sales pitch telling him that XYZ media  is delivering thousands of qualified leads coming in from the company ads and press releases.  What’s going on here?

When you drive by a billboard on the freeway, are you counted as a sales lead?

Of course not.  You may not have even noticed the billboard, let alone read and internalized the message.  Even then, you may not be in the market for that product or service.  The same thing is true of readers responding to ads or visiting the company website.  If they have not been qualified in some way, they’re basically just people driving down the freeway.  Of course in the case of the website, unless the visitor registers in some way, you would never have their contact information anyway.

The qualification process turns freeway traffic into real leads

My first job in marketing was running a little digital chip line.  I did everything from set the prices to get the datasheets written and published, train the salespeople on the line, etc.  And during the average day a half-dozen potential customers would call in looking for information on the line.  Usually they had seen an ad or a press release reprinted in one of the trade Gee-Whiz magazines.  One step up from freeway traffic — they had at least seen the billboard and read it.

During the discussion that followed, at some point they would request more information, typically in the form of datasheets.  This was before the web, so that meant mailing them copies.  And that meant they had to give up their address.  Someone that has just given you their mailing address will almost always give their phone number too, if you just ask for it.  Sometimes they’d ask for prices, and while I normally don’t believe in giving out pricing directly from marketing to customers (it should always go through sales), it was hard to avoid.  But we had a printed price list for small quantities, and I could give those out without stepping on anyone’s toes… those prices were on the high-side so the salesperson always had the ability to “work the pricing” for the customer.

Now I had to write this stuff down somewhere.  I did it during the phone call on forms I had created (in those days that just meant drawing some lines on a piece of paper with labels and running off a hundred or so on the copy machine).  At the end of the call, the form was handed to my secretary and magic happened… literature got sent, and… this is important… a copy of that form went to the appropriate salesperson in the field.  Knowing the mailing address automatically meant we knew who the closest salesperson was.  They got the copy, saw that literature had been mailed, what had been discussed, what the application was, etc.  After a week, the salesperson picked up the phone and called the prospect to be sure the material had arrived and see if they had any questions.  Now that’s a sales lead.

Real sales leads deserve follow-up

In those days offices across the country all had metal desks and on the top left side was a pullout panel that people invariably taped the office phone list to.  In my case, I kept a sheet of paper listing the deals going down that week for my product line, organized by sales area.  Each customer name was followed by two numbers which represented my worst-case and best-case guesses of the size in dollars of the deal.  About twice a week I would get into the office early… 5am (I live and work in California so 5am Calif time was 8am in Boston, Baltimore and Florida).  I’d call the sales offices on the East Coast and chat with the sales people about the deals going down in their area, what remained to be done, what was holding up the close, etc.  And then I’d run through the forms of customer phone contacts from their area, and we’d chat about their applications, who the competition was, etc.  After an hour, I’d start on the Midwest sales offices, and work my way across the country.  Those two things… the phone forms that were my version of sales leads and the followup phone calls once or twice a week made the whole thing work.  I believe that they were the real reason for my success and everything else was just details.

What makes up a real sales lead?

A real sales lead should have the complete contact information… enough so you can figure out who in the salesforce should get it, and enough detail that they can contact the prospect.  It should have a brief description of their application — how they plan to use the product.  And it should state what the next action is… follow up phone call, etc.  Those things are the bare minimum.

Of course the process does not need to start with a phone call.  It might happen at a trade show.  Most people walking the aisles have their badges swiped at booths of interest, but these are the freeway people.  The real sales leads are the people who are willing, or best of all volunteer their business card.  You can write a couple of cryptic words on the back, and bingo… a real sales lead.  A walking, talking prospect who is asking to be contacted (that’s why the business card instead of a badge swipe).  Pure gold.