Tossin' your rope before buildin' a loop don't ketch the calf!

Whether you’re roping a calf or roping a prospect, if the rope doesn’t have a loop on it or you don’t have a sales lead management system in place the results will be the same, no calf, no prospect, no beef, no sale.

There are a lot of companies and solutions that say they are complete sales lead management systems. Most of them address a portion of the process but not the whole process.

In fact, no one solution addresses all aspects of sales lead management; there are too many departments, people and functions, regardless of the hysterical claims by some that they are a complete solution.

It takes a singular leader with a cradle to grave vision of managing prospects to have an impact on a company’s sales lead management process.

CRM, marketing automation, and telemarketing companies, are all part of the solution, but efforts can be futile without sales and marketing management coming to an agreement on the final vision and expectations from both parties. It takes leadership to close the loop.

There is an article on the SLMA website, ¹ accessible by members (free membership), that discusses the people, departments and vendors who must work together.

It is important to understand what must happen for a team to put in place a competitive sales lead

management system that has the potential to bring in more sales for a company than their competitors. The solution isn’t a single software product. It isn’t just an automated nurturing system. It isn’t just a telemarketing vendor. It is smarter and deeper than just spending money on tools. It is the process that must be thought out and in detail.

The issue at stake is getting the most from what you spend on lead generation. Relying on a single tool reminds me of the phrase, “When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.” ²  To solve this issue you need many tools and solid unflinching leadership.

Building a sales lead management process, takes a strong, single minded, gutsy, take no BS from anyone leader. Is that you?

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1.	No Wonder Inquiry Management is Difficult - Look at the Departments Involved! - By James W. Obermayer - Sales Leakage Consulting

    2. Reference Wikipedia: The Law of the Instrument or Law of the Hammer. The first recorded statement   of the concept was Abraham Kaplan's, in 1964: "I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be Formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."[2] Maslow's hammer, popularly phrased as "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks  like a nail" and variants thereof, is from Abraham Maslow's The Psychology of Science, published in     1966.[1]

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