The Funnelholic

More and more, marketers are trying to “qualify” leads through their Web registration form.   I don’t believe in this practice.  I am believer in “business card” information and geo and company targeting. Geography is a common question (thanks, though, for the thousands of leads from Kazakhstan, but I have no sales presence there), and I understand company size. I don’t believe this information causes pause for users.

What I don’t get is the “qualification” questions about budgets and projects. As Web users, we fill out plenty of forms. Do you really want to tell a company you have a project in the works? And that you have a budget? That’s basically chumming the water for the sharks, and users know that. So, essentially you are scaring prospects away, thus hurting conversion rates or in the case of the user actually filling out that form, creating fake data. Or catching the smallest fish in the organization who needs to be thrown back.

There is an easy rule here: Don’t ask anything you wouldn’t ask on a first date.

Here are the three most important questions:

1. How much money do you have (or, at least, the range)? Do you have budget? If so, how big is it?  Guys, get real. The budget question is inappropriate. It’s a judgment call whether it’s even appropriate on the first call.  You need to establish a relationship and common interests and ensure the person likes you before you can ask that. Jumping into the budget question right away makes you look desperate. It makes you look like you are worried about who’s going to pay for dinner.
2. I don’t know you, but I’m concerned about the following potential problems you might have. Please choose one so I know how to approach the rest of dinner. These questions are usually phrased empathetically in terms of “pain,” “what keeps you up at night” or  “what problem are you trying to solve”? And, presumptuously, your issues are pre-selected and served up a la carte in a drop-down menu.  Dude, this one is incredible. Don’t fake concern. They don’t know you yet, so why would they trot out their character flaws?
3. How long will it be till we sleep together? (In case you’re missing the connection here, these are the reg form timeframe questions.)  This one’s worth a shot because you really have nothing to lose if you’ve gotten this far. But no one really answers this question honestly and most want to avoid it altogether. They know you will call them, but they may not be ready to get serious so soon.

The bottom line is:  It’s noble to try, but don’t use reg forms to do the job of your lead qualification or sales team.  You are scaring great prospects off, and are hurting conversion too little benefit.  Use your reg forms to confirm interest, target your market, and get their info.  Gather more data on your second date or your third when you’ve both invested some time.

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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If you have read any of my previous posts or heard me talk, then you know how I feel about the importance of building a lead-development team.  But you can’t build a strong lead-development team if you don’t know the distinction between lead qualification and lead development:

• Lead qualification is the process of taking inbound requests and qualifying them before sending them to sales.
• Lead development is the process of taking leads attained from avenues such as white papers and convincing registrants to hear more from your organization and then qualifying them.

Today, you may have a lead-qualification team.  If the volume justifies it, keep the lead-qualification team.  However, if you want to succeed with third-party-generated leads (such as white paper or webinar leads), it’s time to build a top-notch lead development team.

There are many aspects to the process. First, let’s concentrate on the people.

Lead development is essentially a sales vehicle, so the people involved in this process have to be able to:

• Face rejection. Remember, the average third-party white paper converts from 4 percent up to 20 to 30 percent.  That means that a large number of these leads will not convert. Your lead-development reps have to be ready for a healthy amount of rejection.
• Overcome objections. See above. Just because you’ve been rejected doesn’t mean you should give up.  You’ll likely never receive the response “I want to be sold by You.” A good objection-handling strategy (see below) can help handle these contacts.
• Be engaging. Nobody buys anything from people they don’t like.  Plain and simple. The core trait of great sales reps is their ability to convince someone to do something they don’t want to do without their realizing it.
• Dial, Dial, Dial. The best sales development teams manage their reps by output.  Tailor them to your organization, but watch your numbers.  Work backwards from “passed to sales rep.”  How many connections does it take before passing a lead to a sales rep? Ideally one. How many attempts does it take to connect? You need to have quotas, and those making the calls need to be overtly aware of those quotas.

Where do you find these people?

• The “straight-out-of-college” model. I like this model a lot.  The lead-development team can be a farm team for your sales force.  The key to success here is training, training, training, as well as a real understanding of the “type” of person that will be successful. You need to follow your gut, because they usually lack tangible experience.
• The “stay-at-home mom and dad” model. This model is hot.  A lot of the outsourced lead-generation vendors are going to this model.  A number of my customers have built rock-solid teams using stay-at-home folks.  The key here is you can get lots of experienced reps.  I do not think this is the best model for low ASP (average sales price) or fast sales-cycle type sales, but more for larger deal size, enterprise type sales.
• Outsourced. People ask me this all the time: Outsource or in-house?  Outsourcing can work,  but it is not plug and play.  You have to put in the same amount of effort you would if you are building it in-house.  And it won’t work initially, you will need to come out of the gate slowly, but you can make it work over time.

Stay tuned for the next step: Process

Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Tags: Lead Development, Lead Qualification

The economy is the pits, and things are looking to get worse.  I can’t get up on my pedestal and convince everyone why, but I can say that when every investment bank on the street falls on its face, we have a problem. And these aren’t small players, by the way. These are institutions.

We can’t play dumb, we have to be proactive. What’s incredible is the forthcoming list is not much different than my previous posts. They’re just more vital, and if you haven’t considered these already, get with the program now.

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Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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Marketers ask me all the time the benefits of thought leadership, and I have only one thing to say: “Make it happen.”  When it doesn’t work, it’s often for a number of reasons:

1.    Poor execution.
2.    Not enough effort. In b2b, there really is no such thing as over-exposure.
3.    Poor choice of superstar – a.k.a., your thought leader. The one who is going to fill the house, put butts in the seats and pretty much make your brand the equivalent of a household name.

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Written by Craig Rosenberg - The Funnelholic
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