At Good Leads®, our Prospect Builder® B2B lead generation premium brand, has been our mainstay offering for the last 11 years. Why is that? We think we know the answer to that but we specifically ask our customers and build the feedback process into our programs.

Rapport creates that working relationship which is good for both parties but the key Measure of Success  is the MQL, marketing qualified lead and SQL, sales qualified lead that our programs produce. As the CEO, I often ask the client directly for feedback. The following is feedback recently from the executive vice president of sales for an executive level focused B2B travel management provider who is a client starting their 2^nd contract period with Good Leads. He reminded us that he thought his assignment to GL would be hard because internally they had struggled with performing the discovery, qualification and securing a next step function themselves which is why they outsourced. The level of difficulty in doing so was enhanced due to the lead success criteria being set high requiring the MQL’s, marketing qualified leads, had to be with entities that had at least $1M in airfare spend annually. More specifically the target market to be pursued was healthcare. Thus the discovery and deep qualification required set the bar fairly high not withstanding determining if the entity had pain points sufficient to entertain the notion of looking at a new provider solution. Nonetheless, our client confirms that after holding face to face meetings that GL secured, 7 sales qualified leads are in their sales pipeline.  A good “Measure of Success” in my eyes and the GL client as well.

Everyone knows what a closed sale is! It is real and measurable. But can anyone say with certainty that there is a universal understanding on what a “Lead” is?

Consider the following progression from simple leads to more complex qualified leads:

1)      Individual name/title, company, phone number/email.

2)      Individual name filtered by self-identifying action via a website download, social media, participation in a trade show, etc.

3)      Individual who has committed to an appointment with a sales rep to hear “the pitch”.

4)      Individual who listens to “the pitch” and wants to learn more.

5)      Individual who in speaking with a lead generator/business development/sales rep reveals details about their interest, needs, initiatives, and timeframes.

6)      Individual who has revealed they are buying a solution and are considering purchasing yours.

For Business Development, Marketing, and Sales professionals, what is apparent is that there is a “pipeline” for leads, just as there is a pipeline for sales opportunities.  Both pipelines are important to engage, follow-up, nurture, and track.  It is crucial to establish a working definition so that you can avoid duplication of effort and prevent losing touch with prospects.

Do you know the true costs of your sales process? You know what you pay your sales people, their travel, their entertainment and their benefits. From that and based on the production of closed sales opportunities, you can determine your ROI.  Right? Well….sort of.

There are hidden costs.  There are sales processes that when you get down to it are just plain time consuming and perhaps even painful.  Do you want your shiniest assets chasing every so called lead they get from marketing, ads, email campaigns, events, trade shows, from web inquiries?  90%+ of these inquiries never pan out.  You know that and your assets who are chasing these leads know it too.  Yet, you keep on having those leads chased and having your assets consume their valuable time dialing and leaving voicemails that rarely get returned.  Or worse, you have an inside business development team, sales associates, do this task and they too have no better luck.  They get frustrated and ultimately leave or move on.  This creates a gap in your process.

Back to the hidden costs.  Replacing reps and dealing with the churn in your front end process is costly.  Costly for you to find new reps to do the dialing volumes.  Costly for you to train them, to coach them and get them to a level of proficiency.  The more complex your end product or service is, the longer it will take to bring the new rep up the competency curve.