STOPPING THE MADNESS. Stop It! and Re-ignite the Sales Team

Transcription

1 STOPPING THE MADNESS On Average: Only 27% of Sales Leads Get Acted On - Sales People Don t Trust the Process Only 21% Those Convert - They re Talking to the Wrong People Yet Only 18% of Time is Spent Selling - Meaning Over 4/5ths of the Time They re Not Stop It! and Re-ignite the Sales Team

2 Problem #1 It s almost an oxymoron: We live in a technological world where legions of marketing and sales teams bust their butts to squeak out a few positive percentage points to increase online leads and customer interaction. Companies spend thousands of dollars hiring training firms to work with sales teams in the art of boosting closing ratios by a couple of percentage points. all adding up to a tremendous cost year after year. Yet according to many studies, summed up by Ken Krogue for Forbes*, 71% of generated sales leads are wasted. How? On average they are followed up on after 46 hours, 53 minutes. If you are a buyer looking at several competitors, would you remember or appreciate that slow of a turn-around? That s like going to Burger King and having them say, We ll have it your way next week. After spending all of that money on lead development and sales enhancement, does that make sense? So what s the problem? *

3 Sales people don t trust the process. Look sales people are not lazy. For the most part they know better. Their livelihood depends on success. They also, however, aren t stupid. If the process for lead generation proved itself to provide sales-ready leads they d follow up --- pronto. But after a short trial period: If leads given to them continually proved to be dead ends they will assume that the next batch will not be any better. If leads given to them were not aligned with company sales initiatives or current promotions, sales people see them as too shallow, too late. So history will tell them leads provided are not to be trusted. Thousands of dollars in lead development is wasted. Perhaps hundreds of sales opportunities are missed. If CEO s knew this, whose head would roll? Problem #2 It turns out sales people may be right: They can t trust their current lead generation process. On average, of the handful of leads that are followed up on and lead to a sales call, only 21% convert. For your sales team, that s a lot of time spent in front of the wrong people. Gleanster Research posted a study pointing to the source of the problem. After looking at the closing ratios across numerous industries and companies they concluded only 25% of sales leads were qualified enough to be passed on to sales teams. Another form of waste: So what s going on? Poor Performance

4 The biggest problem lies in the definition of a sales lead. For most this ranges anywhere from a name on a purchased list to a certain demographic or title who looks like a good prospect. A few leads will come in via a contact box on a website. Unfortunately none of these are likely to convert. Even the lead coming from your contact box is not yet qualified and will take some nurturing (which means delivering multiple pieces information) until they proclaim your company as the winner. The second problem lies in the way companies prospect for leads. Telemarketing, direct mail, s to cold lists - that s not how companies buy. They prefer to research their solutions and options until a winner is chosen. Up to 70% of B2B decision makers admit they know who they will do business with before a sales team is ever alerted and called in. 50% of leads may be qualified but they re not ready to buy. (Gleanster) Just 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to sales. (MarketingSherpa) 65% of B2B s have not established lead nurturing. (MarketingSherpa) Even though Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more leads. (Forrester Research) And Those with mature lead nurturing have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing generated leads. (Forrester) Problem #3 According to Industrial Performance Group* the average sales person spends only 18% of their time in true sales activity. This includes preparing proposals and sitting in front of potential customers. That s less than 1/5 th of their time. The rest of their time is spent: Prospecting for their own leads - either because it is required or they are frustrated with the current lead generation process. (20%) Traveling, responding to s, filling out reports or receiving product and skills training. (39%) Dealing with problems that others in the company should be able to prevent or handle: Early, late or missed deliveries, short ships, shipments and paperwork that don t match, damaged goods, etc. (23%) *

5 It doesn t take a genius to see the waste and hypocrisy in calling a sales person by their title if only 18% of their time is spent doing what they do best - selling. Time Equals Money. More Time Equals More Money. This isn t a paper on time studies for sales personnel, but what would happen if a company with 20 sales reps suddenly found 2 more hours per rep per week in front of customers? That s a 20% boost in sales time. It s 40 more hours a week the equivalent of a full time sales person. Would that mean a 20% boost in sales? Interesting thought. A survey by CSO Insights suggests that while there is not a direct correlation, more time selling equals more money for the company. They found that those sales people who can boost their selling time by 20% make quota 62% of the time, vs. 55% for the average producer. IT S ALL MADNESS! 71% of leads are wasted. Only 21% ever convert. Sales people spend only 18% of their time doing what they are hired to do - sell! Are you ready to stop the madness? We ve seen that only 27% of the sales leads provided ever get acted upon because sales people distrust the quality of the leads. We ve also seen that only 25% of sales leads given to sales people should ever be passed on in the first place. They are not fully qualified or sale-ready. They lack nurturing the element that it takes to help the 70% of purchasers who research and then know who they ll do business with to choose your company over a competitor.

6 Finally, we ve seen that sales people spend only 18% of their time preparing and presenting proposals. That s not enough. Taking all things into consideration it is no wonder that: Sales people have a nonchalant attitude towards the sales leads they are provided and follow up on such a small percentage of them. Closing ratios, on average, are way less than what they could be because leads are of poor quality. They aren t nurtured or qualified. Sales time is wasted, not only because of the mundane activities but because sales people are forced to prospect for their own leads and then sit in front of the wrong prospect at the wrong time. Remember that statistically only a 2 hour boost per week per rep in front of the right person would make a monumental difference. They spend twice that just prospecting. So what if sales people could trust the lead generation process - in fact had input in it? What if they were excited to jump on leads provided? What if leads were highly nurtured - to the point that when they were passed on to sales they were waiting to hear a live demo, online presentation, a sales call or offered a Request for Proposal (RFP)? What if the burden of leads prospecting was taken out of their hands so they had more time for selling? Are you ready to stop the madness - and start selling?

7 The Solution All of the frustrations and madness described so far can be dealt with. The madness can stop. The what if s just above and the resulting benefits can be obtained with one solution - a lead generation and marketing automation campaign. A complete inbound lead campaign captures the attention of business leaders looking for solutions, nurture leads through a multi-channel process and score them for sales readiness. All of this is done while preserving and emboldening your company brand, products or services. But a scored lead is not ready for your sales department. During a further qualification process the good lead generation campaign will digitally hold the hand of the prospective buyer and get them to deliver enough of their own information so they are requesting a demo, sales call or even give you a Request for Proposal (RFP), depending on the common practice in your industry. At the same time a marketing automation platform will host, push out and monitors results. Through a dashboard, you can view collateral as it is generated and follow the results of all channels in your lead generation campaign. You ll also see your leads develop from mild interest to sales ready qualification after a prospect has been engaged up to 24 times and scored 4 levels deep.

8 So Imagine providing your sales team qualified leads they ll fight over, rather than ignore. Imagine knowing those sales leads have already been introduced to your company s products or services, been fed pertinent information so everyone on the buying team is on board, and they are actually waiting for your sales team to contact them. Imagine shifting the time-waste of prospecting away from your highly compensated sales members to doing something novel -- selling! Imagine higher closing ratios enough said? Imagine Stopping the Madness! Latus Lead Generation can do that. We ll: Develop your lead generation campaign after consultation with you and your sales and marketing teams, Nurture your leads and pass them onto sales only when they are qualified for action-readiness, providing all the information needed to follow up, Provide - for FREE - your marketing automation dashboard so you can track progress, view sales collateral we develop and watch your leads go from mild interest to full qualification.

9 The next step is simple, painless and doesn t cost you a dime. Click on this link, or go to latusleadgeneration.com/the-start-button.html Simply ask for your company-specific report. For the products or services you want us to investigate, we ll dig into your specific market. On our dime and time we ll compile a private report showing you: How many potential buyers are looking for your products or services - right now! How many we believe we can turn into highly qualified sales leads - and how we know! Your estimated return on investment for a lead generation campaign, including: Your customer acquisition costs. The lifetime value of that customer. A ROI ratio. How we d develop your lead generation campaign and the costs. It s very simple. Click here fill out the form answer a few easy questions we ll handle the rest. And when we re done (it ll take us about 3 days) we ll go over everything with you. It only takes a few seconds to begin Stopping the Madness. Just go here now!