Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Why You Should Provide Quality Sales Qualified Leads

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I'm a sales guy, always have been and always will be.  While my current title is CEO, I still see my job as Chief Sales Guy.  Every day I sell my company's brand to potential clients, partners as well as current and future employees.

First a disclaimer, I am clearly biased as it is my company's mission to provide sales professionals with the best quality sales opportunities available.  Our sales opportunities make sales people better and more productive, and as a result drive top line revenue for our clients.  Sorry for the ad, you can forgive me right?  After all I am a sales guy.

I would like to point out just a few of the many reasons I believe it is important to provide your sales team with quality "sales qualified leads". 

• Momentum: One of the most difficult things to achieve and even more difficult to maintain is momentum. If you provide your sales team with quality SQL's on a consistent basis they are far more likely to achieve and maintain optimal levels of performance. Staying motivated as a sales professional can be very challenging in a world where we need to hear nine "no's" to get to the one "yes." It is much easier to get back on track after a tough day of getting beat up if fresh new opportunities with all their promise are being provided to feed our optimistic attitude that this could be the next big closed deal. Keep our eyes looking forward toward the next opportunity by keeping us fed well with quality SQL's, whatever the investment it's going to be a lot cheaper than having a discouraged, unproductive sales person.
 
• You don't want sales people prospecting: They don't want to do it, they are not good at it, it does not make economic sense and they are not going to do it anyway. They put their time in, learned how to sell, and don't want to move backward and relearn prospecting. Chances are you are paying your sales people for the wealth of sales knowledge they bring to your organization. Junior sales people are less costly and more eager to work their way up the latter by learning how to prospect successfully. If you require your sales team to do their own prospecting you are overpaying to create a misery and inefficiency.
 
• Sales people need to feel loved:  By investing in supporting your sales team, you send the message that they serve a critically important role in your organization.  They will appreciate this and rise to the challenge.  If not, you have removed any excuse enabling you to identify problems early make changes when necessary creating efficiency, reducing risk and ultimately driving revenue.

Two weeks from today, I'll talk about why most companies ignore the lead qualification step in the Marketing & Sales process and why it is costing them big.