Sliver Bullets in Lead Generation

There was a time when budgets were fat, prospects were content, and if the sales team said the right thing, it was time to ring the bell. There was also a time when ad executives took two Martini lunches. Those days are over. Prospects are more sophisticated, their problems are more complex, and budgets are scrutinized to the right of the decimal. Where does this leave sales and marketing? If your team is using traditional methods to reach markets and makes sales calls, out in the cold.

I spoke last night with a colleague who said she has just left a sales meeting that reflects the problem in many companies. The sales manager and CEO of a professional services firm asked the team what the company could be doing better. Two of the reps said they thought the organization needed a strategy for lead generation and that several internal processes needed improvement to better support its existing customers. These were sales people mind you; the group that usually complains that marketing sends them cold leads. How did their leader respond? He said, “Ok team, we are not meeting quotas, we need more production, we’ve got to ring that bell! Next week there will be mandatory training on phrases that close. Now let’s get out there and close some business. Who is with me? Again? Again? Lets’ rock people”.

What you just read typifies one of the many reasons why sales are down for this company and its bleed good sales people. To market and sell effectively a sales team needs to have a strategy for each vertical market in which they are looking to close sales. Sales today in the B2B non-commodity, non-transaction world require advancing a sale. To do that, Marketing needs to be leading Sales with a deep understanding of the buyers, influencers and opportunities in each vertical market. Sales needs to take that information and turn it into a strategy that advances each sales opportunity a step at a time. If anyone on your sales team has attended Sandler’s President’s Club program, they get the concept of having an agreement at each step of the sales process that makes sure all open concerns are addressed before moving forward. Beyond that, advancing a sale takes more than badgering the prospect with silver bullet phrases. While these techniques work for sales where the cost relative to the budget is low, or the prospect is less sophisticated, they fail where there are multiple layers of spending oversight, the problems are complex, or the solution is competing with the prospects other priorities.

The silver bullet to successful solution sales can be summed up this way “Know your prospect and their market better than they know it”. Here are some keys to gaining insight and taking action:

• Start with a few markets. A planned approach yields much better insight.
• Get a clear understanding of the prospect’s business challenges. Understand their supply chain so your team can develop open ended questions that help advance a sale by reinforcing your value.
• Design an approach mapped to each vertical and apply it to the process.
• Focus on the buyer’s journey, Focusing on the sales process leads a sales team to push a sale rather than advance it. A process based view puts outbound calls (the least likely to close) ahead of advancing a sale already in the pipeline.
• Win friends and influence people. If your prospect has pain outside your solution set, refer them to a trusted college.

Simply put, without Sales, Marketing and Operations on the same page, you don’t have a strategy, you have at best three blind men describing the elephant from different perspectives, each plotting a course of action based on their own perception with sales shooting silver bullets at the prospects in order to satisfy an outdated comp plan.

Call us today for a free sales and marketing consultation and to receive a free copy of our integrated sales & marketing toolkit. 410.782.0360.