Sales follow-up: You might think that sales-follow-up is outside the purview of lead management. If you do, think again. In fact—along with inquiry qualification—encouraging, monitoring and measuring field sales follow-up provided the original raison d’être for the third-party sales lead management industry, which popped up in the early 1980s. Third-party lead management originally focused on helping companies with “direct” (employee) sales forces, but by the 1990s, several of the more advanced firms had mastered the art of working with “indirect” (distributor or independent rep) sales forces as well. I want to reinforce with readers that effective lead managers can and do successfully monitor and measure indirect sales force activity.
We need to offset misperceptions that trying to manage partner leads is wasted effort.
It’s in our best interests as well as yours because we ourselves often have difficulty persuading our own clients that lead management involving third-party reps can work, if properly executed. Initially, most clients throw up their hands and cling to the belief that trying to manage third-party rep performance is futile——like trying to turn a stand of trees into a chorus line.
Implementing CRM software doesn’t supplant the need for effectively executed lead management strategies
Now, you might also think that having a CRM system in place takes the place of lead management. If you do, step back and stop remembering the software sales pitch you heard. CRM software is a tool—an automation tool, a reporting tool, a collaboration tool and a data integration tool. But it barely helps B2B lead management unless it’s enabling and supporting a well thought-out and fully articulated sales lead management strategy, as in the following example.
An innovative manufacturing company historically known for excellent sales strategies and effective lead management—pre-CRM—does an excellent job of motivating, monitoring and measuring field sales activity post-CRM. Lead management tools it uses include:
• Matching selling processes to individual customer buying processes.
• Monitoring milestone achievements across steps to the sale.
• Comparing field sales rep performance across a range of metrics
• Identifying rep training needs based on milestone achievement, or lack thereof.
• Monitoring customer retention.
Tellingly, while CRM software helps supports all of these tasks, it can’t perform any of them by itself.
These functions have to be designed according to business requirements, properly configured within the app, and most importantly—managed by people, not software.
Here’s a good way to frame the relative contributions of lead management and CRM software to managing sales follow-up. Companies can effectively manage sales lead follow-up using lead management tools—but lacking any CRM software support. It’s a tad untidy and manual, although some companies have done it for decades. However, lead generating companies cannot effectively manage sales follow-up with CRM software alone—in the absence of broader lead management tools.
We should all chew on this for a while. We badly need to put into proper context CRM’s contribution to sales lead-follow and to lead management programs overall. While CRM can enable and automate important lead management processes, such support takes a back seat in importance to what people contribute across the entire lead management spectrum.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Lead Distribution; doesn't matter how much water comes out of the hose if it isn't pointed at the fire! Part V: Dick Lee Series
Lead distribution: Sounds as easy as rolling off a log. And when the time comes to set up sales lead distribution, many companies do literally “roll off a log,” getting in over their head because they don’t think ahead. “What can be so hard about forwarding a few sales leads,” you ask? The very same issue that trips up so many inquiry generating initiatives—where the heck do you send stuff? Only this time, the answer—or better said, the way to find the answer—is quite different.
Here’s an example of what’s so hard. Sales rep A covers two states plus a part of a third—the part north of Interstate 94, which inconveniently bisects several large cities. Meanwhile, Sales rep B covers the south side of I-94, down to I-90, which bisects even more major city markets. How the hell does corporate marketing or a third-party lead management service—never mind its computers—know what’s north of I-94 and what’s south, and what’s north of I-90 and what’s south? And things get really grisly when sales territories split on state or county highways or even city streets.
Then, we have companies that set sales territories by county, rather than zip code. You always get the zip code back with a response, but how often do you capture the county?
There is an “obvious” solution. But like so many “obvious” solutions, it doesn’t work, at least not very well. That’s forwarding leads to a regional office and letting field managers figure out their own distribution. But running leads through an extra pair of hands is a great way to lose them, or delay them—and even more importantly, not computer-assigning leads after they’re qualified makes a mess out of tracking and drastically lowers rep-level accountability.
Oh, and not to forget, what happens when a lead from a prized national account covered exclusively by national account reps gets thrown into the response mix, as often happens? Nothing good if you haven’t prepared for this contingency. And this problem gets compounded when these respondents use variants on formal company names that slip through the lead management software’s record matching function, if the software even has such a function. Try record matching in Excel or Access, will you? A classic example of company names that defy uniformity is the many divisions of 3M Company, most of which are known internally by acronyms or abbreviations.
Like rolling of a log? Yeah, like rolling off a real log in deep, rushing water when you can’t swim.
Because the problems surrounding lead distribution are so varied, I’m going to use a “collage” example of real-world solutions rather than citing a single company’s approach.
The best solution for assigning leads geographically (as opposed to the first obvious solution) is for lead-generating B2B companies to get a grip on the reality. Hey folks, we’re in the age of automation. If computers can’t accurately assign leads to sales territories, redo your territories instead of thrusting your heads into the sand. And if SCFs (three-digit zip code prefixes) or even five-digit zip codes aren’t precise enough, drill down to nine-digits using software expressly designed for this purpose.
The problem is eased for companies assigning sales territories by county, because you can purchase software that affixes counties to street
addresses. But that’s a lot messier than using three- or five-digit zip codes that require no special software.
I will issue one caveat to the above. If you’re selling through third-party reps, distributing leads to distributor or rep company offices may be the only lead distribution route open. However, if you have to go this route, your partner agreements should spell out accountability for partner companies to follow up all qualified leads and report back outcomes.
Unfortunately, properly distributing leads from national accounts and related “special assignment” customers takes more work—but doing this work up front has distinct advantages over a commission-hungry rep going into a national account unaware of special discounts; losing the business by over-quoting; and then ruffling national account customer feathers because the seller is violating pricing agreements.
So here’s the drill. To resolve this issue, inquiry generating companies with successful lead management programs:
Here’s an example of what’s so hard. Sales rep A covers two states plus a part of a third—the part north of Interstate 94, which inconveniently bisects several large cities. Meanwhile, Sales rep B covers the south side of I-94, down to I-90, which bisects even more major city markets. How the hell does corporate marketing or a third-party lead management service—never mind its computers—know what’s north of I-94 and what’s south, and what’s north of I-90 and what’s south? And things get really grisly when sales territories split on state or county highways or even city streets.
Then, we have companies that set sales territories by county, rather than zip code. You always get the zip code back with a response, but how often do you capture the county?
There is an “obvious” solution. But like so many “obvious” solutions, it doesn’t work, at least not very well. That’s forwarding leads to a regional office and letting field managers figure out their own distribution. But running leads through an extra pair of hands is a great way to lose them, or delay them—and even more importantly, not computer-assigning leads after they’re qualified makes a mess out of tracking and drastically lowers rep-level accountability.
Oh, and not to forget, what happens when a lead from a prized national account covered exclusively by national account reps gets thrown into the response mix, as often happens? Nothing good if you haven’t prepared for this contingency. And this problem gets compounded when these respondents use variants on formal company names that slip through the lead management software’s record matching function, if the software even has such a function. Try record matching in Excel or Access, will you? A classic example of company names that defy uniformity is the many divisions of 3M Company, most of which are known internally by acronyms or abbreviations.
Like rolling of a log? Yeah, like rolling off a real log in deep, rushing water when you can’t swim.
Because the problems surrounding lead distribution are so varied, I’m going to use a “collage” example of real-world solutions rather than citing a single company’s approach.
The best solution for assigning leads geographically (as opposed to the first obvious solution) is for lead-generating B2B companies to get a grip on the reality. Hey folks, we’re in the age of automation. If computers can’t accurately assign leads to sales territories, redo your territories instead of thrusting your heads into the sand. And if SCFs (three-digit zip code prefixes) or even five-digit zip codes aren’t precise enough, drill down to nine-digits using software expressly designed for this purpose.
The problem is eased for companies assigning sales territories by county, because you can purchase software that affixes counties to street
addresses. But that’s a lot messier than using three- or five-digit zip codes that require no special software.
I will issue one caveat to the above. If you’re selling through third-party reps, distributing leads to distributor or rep company offices may be the only lead distribution route open. However, if you have to go this route, your partner agreements should spell out accountability for partner companies to follow up all qualified leads and report back outcomes.
Unfortunately, properly distributing leads from national accounts and related “special assignment” customers takes more work—but doing this work up front has distinct advantages over a commission-hungry rep going into a national account unaware of special discounts; losing the business by over-quoting; and then ruffling national account customer feathers because the seller is violating pricing agreements.
So here’s the drill. To resolve this issue, inquiry generating companies with successful lead management programs:
- Build company name matching tables including all known variants and abbreviations
- Use record matching software with “fuzzy logic” that matches against multiple data fields and even uses phonetics (“sounds like”) functionality to suggest possible matches
- Preferably do both. These techniques still fall short of being 100% bullet-proof. But not by much.
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