Closing the lead lifecylce loop through measurement & Reporting; Final Part in a Dick Lee Series

Tracking, measurement & feedback: Here’s where we meet the end of the lead management cycle—and the beginning. The data we capture from the sales-follow-up process, and from prior lead management steps as well, not only tell us how we’re doing outcomes-wise—but should tell us how to do it better.

However, all too often companies barely attempt to apply back-end data to drive continuous improvement of sales lead management processes and performance. Why? Typically for several reasons: lack of analytical and interpretive skills; lack of time to “get analytical” and do something about the findings; or lack of training skills and resources; or some combination of these factors.

Back-end lead management data are used more often to “punish” than to improve

Sales follow-up data are commonly used for beating up on underperforming reps— when a closer look at these data would indicate why someone is underperforming and whether specific training and reinforcement focused on specific steps in the selling cycle would help improve performance. After all, despite common perceptions, not every sales failing stems from too much golf. And considering that the pool of sales talent is continuing to shrink towards perilously low levels, salvaging your investment in currently underperforming reps is typically more cost-effective than swapping out “bad” reps for new ones—who might just turn out to be worse. Other tendencies to sell short the value of “beneath the surface” data abound, but here are several examples of companies drilling down and doing things right.

A B2B financial services firm was seeing widely disparate sales follow-up:

So this FI examined data tracking the steps to the sale. As it turned out, its more successful reps were managing to get past the initial point of contact to present to the purchase decision team, while its less successful reps pitched the initial contact only and relied on that person to “carry the message” back to the team. Training, focused on communicating the value to the gatekeeper and gaining the buy-in from the gatekeeper to let the reps through to decision-makers. Measured results showed this resulted in making a significant percentage of low performers significantly more productive.

For another example, a business software company was aggressively generating sales inquiries through a range of publications—from highly vertical, low circulation trade pubs to higher circulation, more horizontal business magazines. The CPI (cost-per-inquiry) was significantly lower with horizontal pubs, with the more vertical trades showing a much higher CPI. But this organization didn’t jump to first obvious conclusions. It “closed the loop” by tracking sales follow-up outcomes and measuring CPO (cost-per-order) for all media sources. And guess what? The CPO rankings were the inverse of the CPI rankings. That sent a clear message that lead generation should focus on verticals unless (or until) they were getting tapped out, which marketing would know when CPO ratios started vectoring sharply upwards. Hey, wish you could have heard how the horizontal media reps howled when their below average CPIs didn’t lead to further placements.

Parenthetically, you might want to view this as a “dated” example. After all, isn’t the web now the primary method of generating B2B inquiries? Not exactly. This company’s software product was creating a new product category, and the reactive web is a relatively ineffective and unreliable channel for introducing new product categories. Customers don’t often google products or categories they don’t know exist.

For an excellent web-based example, just think Amazon.com. Buy once, and they already know something about you. Buy twice and they know four times as much about you. Buy three times, and they know 16 times as much. And on up the exponential ladder. On the pure B2B side, Cisco’s not too shabby either.

Putting the pieces together:

If I could ask you to stop reading and reflect for a moment, how would you rate the impact on sales performance resulting from effectively implementing all aspects of sales lead management? Hard not to say “Very high” or even “extreme,” isn’t it? Or, to put it another way, how would you size up the opportunity cost of not applying lead management to sales lead generating marketing programs. The very same answers, of course, but in the opposite direction. Regardless of which way you prefer to view this picture, either the return on lead management or the opportunity cost of not providing lead management dwarfs the cost of providing effective lead management services—either internally or through a third-party service.