The leads have been distributed........will sales follow up? Part 7 in a Dick Lee series:

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.

A case for lead management - Dick Lee (series)

For the next several weeks I will be leveraging a wonderful paper my company commissioned Dick Lee, Principal of High Yield Methods, to write. While I have made some modifications and added insight the major principles and text are from his paper. That said, here we go, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did!

A CASE FOR LEAD MANAGEMENT -

To the uninitiated, providing effective sales lead management seems daunting—almost too much to ask. And to the already initiated? The reality is worse than the perception. Rather than just “seem” difficult, lead management is difficult, causing many companies throw up their hands in despair and let poorly managed sales lead programs continue wasting money and sales time both. “Hey, most marketing money goes to waste anyway, and all sales people are overpaid and underachieving—so why worry about it?” Or, “Let’s just get an online CRM system and be done with it.”

Claims that MARKETING AUTOMATION, CRM, AND SFA software substitutes for lead management are lies we want to believe!

Despite the short shrift given lead management, I refuse to consider it a lost cause. Lead management is far too big a revenue and profitability driver to leave underutilized. And I even more emphatically refuse to let the slight of tongue tricks of CRM software salespeople stand unchallenged. “Lead management? Don’t worry. Buying our software will take care of it.” Lead management is about people doing hard work at often unglamorous tasks. CRM software merely lightens the load. And if you lack the human resources for inquiry qualification, inquiry fulfillment, nurture marketing and the like—buying CRM software doesn’t do squat to support critical lead management functions.

Unlike too many CRM software “success” stories, lead management successes have real numbers behind them. So, to be constructive, how about we try encouraging more lead management activity by sharing with sales and marketing managers a few tools of the trade? Hopefully, we’ll make mounting an effective lead management program look less daunting. Oh, you think I’m being an incurable optimist? I’ll argue the point, especially when we have successful, data-based lead management success stories to relate—as opposed to the fuzzy “success” stories too often surrounding CRM software implementations.

Okay, I am somewhat of an optimist. But here goes anyway.

Lead management frees up far more labor than it consumes, but still leaves marketing short-handed. While effective lead management creates labor savings in field selling that dwarf the labor marketing consumes across the lead management activity spectrum, the sales force labor saved does not convert into the additional bodies marketing needs for: front-end analytics; inquiry generation; inquiry qualification; nurture marketing; and tracking and back-end analytics. Instead, sales labor savings convert into more quality sales time available to sell more product and generate more revenue. Besides, even if increased selling efficiencies did free up sales labor for reassignment to marketing—would marketing really trust sales types doing any aspect of lead management? No more than sales would trust marketing to sell. Further, even marketing people typically lack the discipline and mindset required for most lead management functions.
But we’ll come back to staffing issues later. In the meantime, let’s review tools and techniques that help make each aspect of sales lead management boost sales revenues.
Front-end analytics: Within a lead-generation program, front-end analytics provide the radar that guides your message to your qualified targets—rather than causing “collateral damage” by landing everywhere except on target. Moreover, front-end analytics help you find the message that will best motivate prospective customers. And haven’t we all been on the receiving end of e-mail, direct mail and telemarketing messages that scream, “Not only don’t I know who you are, I’m clueless about what you want?”
Fortunately, some precision-targeted programs do hit their mark—communicating, “I know you, and I know how to help you”—including one program developed by a mega-FI (financial institution) with above average customer sensitivity........THE REST TO COME.