Sales is a funny old game. Life is cyclical. You bust a gut to hit your monthly targets and on the last day of the month you realise…..tomorrow morning it starts all over again! There will always be good days and there will always be bad days.
In order to maximise on the good days, Sales people need the full support of their management. This includes providing the sales team with the means to maximise on the use of their time. One such process is implementing a structured, integrated sales lead generation system. By engaging with a professional lead generation company you can free up your sales peoples time so that they can focus on what they are best at (and paid to do!) i.e. close business deals.
The two parallel universes described below are very typical in a day in the life of…….
Dominion of the Dynamic | Demesne of the Downtrodden |
7:00am - Alarm goes off to the sweet tune of Hothouse Flowers “It's going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day”. |
7:00am – Alarm goes off to the tune of "How To Disappear Completely" by Radiohead. |
9:00am – First meeting of the day. Final negotiation and sign off with Company X. It’s a cracking deal. |
9:00am – Right….cold calling. Open an excel spreadsheet of 5,000 records. Looks like an export from the 1952 copy of the Golden Pages. Why oh why!!! |
10:00am –Deal secured. This lead was generated by a B2B telemarketing firm who ran a focussed lead generation campaign 3 months ago. Seemingly the boss is speaking with them about another campaign…..and rightly so I say! | 10:00am– Excel sheet is making me feel dizzy. Time for another coffee methinks.
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11:30am – Second meeting of the day. Arrive a little early so time to update our cloud CRM. The lead gen company fed the qualified leads directly into this CRM so I am looking at real time data. | 11:30am – Managed to make 15 phone calls from excel sheet. Spoke with one decision maker who politely told me to go away. There has GOT to be a better way of finding leads! |
1:00pm – Lunch. I think I’ll treat myself. With the morning I have had, I deserve it. | 1:00pm – Quick ham sandwich and jump in the car for a meeting in Ballygobackwards. Hope to God I squeeze a deal out of this guy. I have a meeting with my boss later on to discuss my sales pipeline. |
2:00pm – Lead follow up on my live opportunities. Check and send emails, place phone calls, fill next weeks diary. Fresh leads generated by our outsourced telemarketing agency are fed through and assigned to me. I have complete visibility. | 2:00pm – Finally found meeting location. Heart sinks! I know he’s a plumber but sure maybe he really does need application integration software! |
3:00pm – Run my sales pipeline report. Prep for meeting with the Boss at 4:15pm. | 3:00pm – MMeeting done. Such a nice guy. He told me 3 generations of family history but………no sale! If only I had a source of qualified sales opportunities! |
4:15pm – Meeting with Boss for one-on-one and team sales meetings. | 4:15pm – Meet with boss to run through my sales pipeline and estimate forecast revenue. So not looking forward to this! |
5:30pm – Sales meeting went well. The boss confirmed we will be rolling out a long term appointment setting contract with our lead generation partner. I’m delighted to hear this as the level of qualification on the leads I am receiving is really driving my conversion ratios. | 5:30pm – Have just taken a severe beating! I tried to discuss with my boss the fact that we need to implement a much more structured sales lead generation process. The amount of time I am spending on non-productive sales activities is seriously impacting my ability to sell. Unfortunately my arguments fell on deaf ears. Time to go home and do up my CV! |
The reality of the situation is that these two universes do actually exist. As a Sales Manager you need assess how your sales people are spending their time and how to drive efficiencies in your entire sales process. The generation of qualified sales opportunities is an essential piece to this jigsaw. Conducting this activity in-house can be costly, time consuming and laden with risk. Engaging with the right B2B lead generation partner offers flexibility, fully trained and tested staff, service level guarantees and reduced risk. Don’t wait for your best sales people to look elsewhere for employment. Act today.
Maven TM is specialised in B2B Telemarketing and Lead Generation services for companies looking to consolidate, expand or penetrate national or international markets. For more information, please contact Maven TM at info@maventm.com.