Stop Cussing the Mule and Start loading the Wagon!

We can always take time to point to someone else not doing their job, but I think it’s time that we stop cussing someone else and start tending to the work at hand that will increase sales.    Its time sales started loading the wagon.

We’re heard comments such as, "Salespeople aren’t following up the sales leads" "Marketing doesn’t give us any leads" "Salespeople aren’t using the CRM system" " Marketing isn’t giving us qualified sales leads" "That trade show sure was slow" "We’re not getting leads on the stuff I have a quota for."

 Now I’m not saying that these statements don’t have some truth in them, and good managers are open to hearing the truth and doing something about the complaints, but we can also let these truths stop us from loading the wagon.  Let’s take the issue of sales lead follow-up:

If salespeople aren’t following up leads marketers have four choices:

1. Meet with the sales manager and ask for action.
2. Keeping asking for follow-up from the salespeople at sales meetings.
3. Redirect the lead to another rep that cares.
4. Marketing can start following up the leads with a nurture program. 

The two actions which seem to get the most movement are the last two: Redirect the lead to someone who cares and marketing taking over the follow-up until the person wants to buy. 

Last year a client’s salespeople said they had not gotten a dozen leads in a year.  Sure enough they were lying; they had gotten about 15 each in the previous year.  We jump-started lead generation and they started getting 60 a month per rep.    They were so swamped that follow-up dropped to 10% and the cussing started on both sides.  True we gave them more than they could consume and eventually we slowed it down a bit (and hired more reps).

We also started directing leads to other salespeople when leads were not followed-up in 48 hours; suddenly there was a change of heart.    They stopped cussing the mule and followed-up the leads they were given.  I don’t mean to imply that marketing is a mule, but you have to admit they are most often the unsung creators of wealth in an organization. My thoughts?  Its time sales stopped cussing marketing and started loading the wagon. 

Comments

[Jim La Belle]

With a good sales lead management or CRM system you can actually accomplish all four tasks automatically and seemlessly. All you need to do is create the task and set the workflow behind it so that the system does all of these things.You can send summary reports and reminders to sales managers, resend overdue leads to reps, reassign aged leads and nurture leads directlky through the system. In addition, we always recommend publishing "what have you done for me lately" reports that let everyone know the facts. All of these tools are available in our software both in the cloud and on your server.

[Amanda DePaul]

Perhaps the biggest issue at hand in this situation is the marketing and sales teams haven't agreed on what makes a lead truly qualified. If the sales team is consistently supplied with leads who aren't qualified, the drive to follow-up with those leads is bound to plummet. The best plan of action to kick-start sales would be to sit down with both teams and map out some qualities that make a prospect worth sending to sales to be followed-up on. Marketing will be more supportive and salespeople will be more excited to close the deal.