DON’T Use Your Sales Team

I came across Mike Damphousse’s interview on Craig’s Funneloholic blog (which has a lot of great reads!) and thought this answer of Mike was right on – something we educate our customers on all the time. 

5.    What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?

Don’t spend the budget on every idea you know. Diversify, but stay focused. Pick a handful of effective programs as opposed to all of them. Use experts, use technology, but DON’T use your sales team. Serve the leads to them in a quality package that’s ready to be sold to. Don’t inundate them with names, numbers and email addresses. They shouldn’t be doing the marketer’s job.  They should be face to face with prospects that have real issues to solve.

This answer has a lot of different dimension to it but the central theme is how marketers can serve their sales team with leads that may result in conversations – so sales can focus on identifying opportunities than on identifying decision maker contacts, gathering account intelligence or finding email addresses. Leads that are ready to be sold to are critical and its important for marketers to focus on 

• Quality of leads being passed over to sales. Make sure the leads are accurate role-based decision maker or influencer contacts. 
• Completeness of leads sent to sales. Make sure the leads are complete with direct or one-hop numbers (Don’t just pick a company number you get from the website or Hoovers) and email addresses. 
• Qualification of accounts done specifically for every campaign so that sales understands the account intelligence before they pitch. 

Laser focus on lead lists that are sales-ready and you are bound to see increased effectiveness of your sales programs. 

Related posts:

• Inbound Lead Qualification: Making Your Sales Team Love You
• How to Keep Your Sales Team Happy With Great B2B Business Contacts Lists
• Hiring A Lead Generation Team For Less Than One Persons Salary To Beat The Recession Blues
• B2B Sales: Avoid Disappointment & Demo To The Right Decision Makers
• B2B Marketing Lists With A Twist – The New 2009 Flavor