Bettercloser.com - Too Many (Social Media) Friends

This isn’t another rant on quality over quantity in lead generation. Or a diatribe on how critical lead management is to sales. It’s an important sales discussion about focus, discipline, and misplaced hope.

In sales we often pride ourselves in our ability to hunt. Collecting names, numbers, emails, business cards, and friends make us feel secure. We know it’s a numbers games with lots of No’s for the occasional Yes.

Although all true, it’s exactly this programming that can lead sales people into a dangerous rut.

Collecting without Sales Process

There are packrats and there are curators. You can clearly see the difference.

If you walk into the office or home of a packrat there are arbitrary stacks and piles of stuff–old newspapers, magazines, pieces and parts, trinkets and toys. All these things landing where they may and there they stay. There is little in the way of organization or movement.

Contrast that with a curator. Every item is carefully and quickly reviewed, characterized, and categorized. Put in its proper place for later use. Things flow in and things flow out. There is movement.

A carefully developed sales process is the difference between us being packrats of leads to carefully curating and nurturing leads to deals. A sales person without a disciplined process that moves leads forward is a graveyard for good leads.

The worst part…those without a good sales process often hoard like a packrat–collecting, taking, or requesting the most leads!

Collecting without Engaging Leads

The other danger with incessant collecting is focusing the easy and avoiding the scary.

Face it getting lots of arbitrary followers and filling a database with random names is simple. In some cases you can even automate or buy this gathering of prospects. However, engaging these folks in a conversation, connecting with them in a meaningful way, even taking the risk to introduce yourself makes even the most seasoned sales professional anxious.

It’s much more comfortable (and misleading) to measure success by collections of leads, avoiding the true measure of sales progress–how many scary, new conversations did you have this week?

Collecting without Cleaning House

Kicking a lead out of your sales pipeline is another scary, but necessary process.

Letting a lead go is like peeling your fingers off that soft childhood security blanket. You’re afraid you won’t get another lead to replace it or your letting go of future opportunity. But hanging on means you are wasting precious sales activity on something that’s not ready to close–there are other, more productive ways to manage that lead.

The secret to avoiding this bad sales habit is to carefully observe and define the characteristics of a good lead. This makes it much easier to sort the good for the bad and the hot from the cold. It also gives you the confidence to kick it lose, to another process, and the motivation to work harder on the ones you know are the best opportunities.

Keeping a clean sales pipeline is the best way to “narrow” your sales pipeline and squeeze out more sales.

Collecting without Closing Sales!

Are you on this dangerous path? Have you developed these avoidance behaviors? It’s easy to find out–look at your sales numbers. Up or down? Are you letting whole days go by without a good conversation?

Don’t get trapped in the collection trap–process and close!

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Making new friends is hard. There’s a lot of anxiety in that first interaction. Will they like me? Do we have anything in common? Will I like them? How do I start things off?

I know, this is a blog about sales. Stay with me. We’ll get there.

The result of all this anxiety is that we often wait around for just the right moment, endlessly search or wait for someone to introduce us, or worse…simply avoid the introduction.

The result? No introduction, no new friendship, no new experience, missed opportunity for you and the new friend.

I develop customer relationships much like I build friendship. And the pitfalls are all the same.

So, now back to sales and what this little story illustrates.

The Amount of Stuff is Exploding

The Internet and social media has caused the amount of stuff you can collect on a people and companies to explode. You can literally lose hours of time running down all the rabbit holes people and companies create with their online behavior.

This is very dangerous to your sales performance.

All this stuff becomes a dangerous placebo for your sales anxiety. And just like a placebo, when you get right down to the real results you’re still sick (no sales).

Discipline Your Collecting

To avoid this peril I recommend disciplining your collecting or pre-sales research. A few of the tricks I use:

1. Follow the guideposts - Chances are your prospect is directing you to where they want your attention. These are the places and things they want you to know about them. You’re not a gotcha entertainment reporter. Stop researching like you’re trying to uncover a secret.

2. Get the basics - You don’t need research and find out all the details of a prospect’s life back to grade school. Not only is that a waste of time, but it’s going to freak your prospect out if you start ask them why they got a C in Art back in third grade. Leave some room for discovery at your first meeting.

3. You only need a couple of themes - You want to be as natural and free-flowing as possible when you start up a new relationship. However, it’s nice to have a couple of themes or commonalities that you can pull out of your hip pocket if you’re losing attention. But, you only need a couple–so get them and then stop.

Start Processing (GTD-style)

Hopefully, I have saved you time and made your stack of prospect research much smaller. Now the most important part: Start processing.

I think GTD for Sales. Nothing closes without contact. Be confident you have enough to start a conversation and start processing through your leads.

Your turn. This post was just a starting point. I know we all suffer from this endless collecting pitfall in sales. Help me and others…

What are your tips and tricks on knowing when to stop collecting and start processing?

I’m not sure lead nurturing (a current favorite buzz term in the lead management world) is equivalent to nurturing a personal relationship. However, I think there are sales lessons to be learned from thinking about how we grow and maintain personal relationships.

That’s why I want to introduce you to a thinker on a lot of important things–Jon Swanson (@jnswanson), the social media chaplain.

His backing up relationships post caught my eye. It hasn’t gotten many comments, but I am deeply interested in what people do or think they should do to “back up their relationships.” Stop by and leave a comment.

I think you will be a better sales person by thinking through (and implementing) this concept.

Wow! Fresh into the New Year and Kaleidico is already accelerating through 2010. Today is a very exciting day for me…

Kaleidico Named Fully Compatible with Google AdWords Comparison Ads

Kaleidico has always been very selective in collaborating with others, never wanting to get distracted with shiny objects that would distract us or our customers from success. But a strategic relationship with Google to develop their new Comparison Ads feature was certainly an exception.

We had heard the buzz about Google launching a mortgage lead generation service and soon thereafter the controversy between LendingTree and MorTech. I wanted in.

Why Help with Google Comparison Ads?

I have long-ago sworn off attending one more conference that droned on about lead quality or one more debate over long versus short form Internet leads. The Internet lead generation space was growing stale. What’s more most of the players were fighting for survival, not innovating better customer experiences.

That’s what excited me about Google–a new player, consistently innovative, with the resources to make a difference.

Kaledico’s Sales Manager Improves Sales Discipline

The key to Google Comparison Ads being an explosive success (IMHO) is going to be the customer experience. Consumers expect elegant simplicity and responsiveness. Just recall Google’s start–one simple text box and blazing fast returning search results. This is the experience I wanted to help create with Google Comparison Ads.

And, that’s what we did.

Kaleidico’s Sales Manager is a direct integration for the advertiser to the Comparison Ads marketplace. Once Google notifies us of a user’s request to be connected to a lender via an anonymized phone number, every customer inquiry is immediately delivered to your sales team, distributed based on your rules, and immediate follow-up is enforced by you.

Sales Manager gives you all the tools to be the fastest response on the Web. Here are just a few of the ways Sales Manager gives you the edge in impressing your Google customers:

• New lead alerts via email, SMS, and dashboard
• Automated distribution to the sales people
• Enforced follow-up rules, set by you
• Automated email follow-up campaigns
• Click-to-dial VOIP integration

If you’re a Google Comparison Ads advertiser don’t neglect getting your lead management edge with Kaleidico’s Sales Manager.

If you are like most sales people, your first lead management system was (maybe still is) a yellow legal pad. Do you ever wonder where this trusty friend can from?

I uncovered who we have to thank here: The History of the Yellow Legal Pad.

(Hat tip to Will Kelly and his Rediscovery of Outlines as a Productivity Tool)

Seriously do not waste your time or money on lead management software, if:

• You are not going to put your leads in the software
• You don’t intend to work sales leads in the software
• You don’t plan on using email campaign feature to stay top of mind
• You are a sales team of 1-5

This isn’t a rant, but simple facts.

Kaleidico, my lead management software and services firm, has been in the business of serving sales teams since 2005. The proof is in the pudding (as they say), these scenarios simply don’t seem to get any benefit from a standalone sales software.

In my opinion, simply using Google’s GMail for Contact Management is the best process for small sales teams.

What do you think? Anyone disagree?

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Nothing is more important to a marketer or lead generation company than lead acceptance. Sales needs to like your lead for it to have any chance of converting.

Every other lead conversion metric is irrelevant until you get this part right. Brian Carroll, of the B2B Lead Generation Blog nails it:

For this reason, I think cost-per-opportunity measurements are the most effective metrics. The most common metric, cost per lead, is irrelevant unless we can answer other fundamental questions first, “What is our rate of lead acceptance (a.k.a. sales pursuit) into the sales pipeline” and then “What is the cost per opportunity?” Cost-per-opportunity is the one metric that can help you understand how well your sales team accepts and pursues leads. Ultimately, it shows if your leads are actually helping our sales team sell and if marketers are positively contributing to their pipeline.

So, how do you make leads more attractive and valuable to your sales team. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Don’t play games, show them where they came from
• Get or append as much relevant information as possible
• Work hard to deliver clean (contactable) data
• Use a lead management system that shows/reward performance

Help me with these questions:

1. What methods and techniques you use to motivate “sales pursuit?”
2. Do social media interaction, opportunities, and triggers inherently feel like better leads?
3. Do you tell/reveal to your sales force where leads came from (marketing sources)?

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Looking for free lead management software? It is possible. The basic principles of lead management can be cobbled together with free tools. Depending on your sales goals and quotas, these just might do the trick.

Let’s build a free lead management system.

Lead Capture: Email, Contacts, and Spreadsheets

Most sales leads are coming from business cards, website contact forms, or phone calls. These are easily captured in email, contact databases, or spreadsheets. The key is centralizing that process. Consistently use one method or the other. Lost or misplaced leads are one of the top reasons for poor conversion rates or low sales numbers.

Most lead management software automates the lead capture process. Typically the automation will capture lead data directly or allow for simple imports–quickly and efficiently adding leads to a central database.

Lead Distribution: Email or Spreadsheet

Getting leads out to others on your sales team can be as simple as emailing or forwarding a spreadsheet. The challenge becomes syncing these various leads with associated actions or annotating updates and notes.

Popular lead management software often simplifies this process by allowing leads to be transferred or routed within the database. There is little change for loss and all of the past history and notes travel with the lead–important bonus.

Lead Tracking: Folders or Labels

Any good sales person will attribute their long-term success to their database. That means never losing track of a lead. This can be difficult for most. We (sale people) are an easily distracted bunch. Each new shiny object that pops in attracts our full attention, while more productive leads spoil.

Tracking these maturing sales can be as simple as using some of the most basic filing techniques. Remember folders and labels?

I am not necessarily advocating your investment in filing cabinets, manila folders, sticky labels, and a good Sharpie. I am telling you to get organized so you can find and tune into these valuable leads on a regular basis. Whether you are using email or some file system on your computer, get a filing system.

This can be as simple as breaking your sales process into statuses and stages. Move your leads from one folder to the next. Label each lead with a priority or probability of success. This gives you easy retrieval and a simple count of items in these folders and of these labels will easily give you feedback on progress.

Sales Pipeline: Calendar and Alerts

Pipeline management is a critical skill for squeezing more out of your leads and accurately forecasting sales revenue. Your sales quota depends on you mastering this process. Doing it with a free system can be challenging, but it is possible.

Get a good electronic calendar–one that can alert you on your computer and your phone. Good pipeline management means forward motion. That means you need to schedule forward and attend promptly to what is ready to be attended to.

I like Google Calendar, but your organization may use Outlook or other enterprise calendaring system. Whatever it is get your sales process integrated into it. This will give you a realistic sales pipeline. One that accounts for those miscellaneous sales meetings and reporting requirements. It also ensure real sales get equal or more priority than simple (but necessary) administration and reporting.

Task Management: TODO List

With your leads tracked and sales pipeline under control it is time to get down to work. This is the job of your TODO list. Lucky for you there is no shortage of free task lists. The trick is finding one that you will use.

My suggestion is a good legal pad and pen. Something about scribbling out tasks and striking them off the list motivates productivity. However, there are a lot of great electronic solutions as well–Remember The Milk (RTM) and TaskPaper are a few of my favorites.

In my experience the closer you keep this solution to your email the better. This is especially true for free lead management as most of your tasks are invariably generated from and maybe moved forward by email.

Lead Nurturing: Email and Calendar

Finally, you need to manage those leads that aren’t quite ready to convert, but may given time and contact. Again, your email and calendar are the right tools to keep up the appropriate touch points and frequency of contact.

Set-up triggers and integrate them into your regular calls and email correspondence. These prospects will be impressed you remembered them and you will be glad you did. Lead nurturing is probably one of the most effective ways to build a healthy and consistent sales pipeline.

There you go, free lead management. A bit more work and less functionality than proper lead management software, but for a single sales person it can get you by. The calculation you need to do is what will a small investment in integrated sales lead management do for your business?

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I have notice the volume on the “sales-ready” lead concept has really been turned up lately. What does this mean?

It sounds a lot like an excuse to me.

I don’t see a lot of the sales leadership greats–Zig Ziglar, Jeffrey Gitomer, Harvey MacKay–talking about how to close a “sales-ready” lead. However, they do talk a lot about behaviors and processes that help you get more people “sales-ready.”

Sure, if you are in an organization big enough to have a marketing department they should work hard to be the best. But, are they really responsible for delivering “sales-ready” leads?

In my opinion, if that is the case then you should just add a shopping cart to your website and fire all the sales people.

What do you think?

• What is your definition of a “sales-ready” lead?
• Who is responsible for getting it to that status?
• Do you use this terminology in your sales process?

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There is nothing more dangerous to sales production than rolling out a new compensation plan or incentive program. Often we make these tweaks to reward or encourage good behaviors we see in our sales organization, but I warn…caution is warranted.

I just encountered just such a scenario the other day. Here is an example of how rewards are about to unwind good sales behaviors:

As a brief background, Kaleidico’s Sales Manager (lead management software from my company) is uniquely designed as a pull-based CRM software. This is a very rare feature for lead management, but is incredibly powerful way to discipline sales management. You see, you have to work leads to get leads and it creates a healthy competition for sales leads.

In this particular scenario the client is experiencing an incredible sub-minute initial contact average. Talk about incredible customer service!

The logical conclusion is that their entire sales force is hungry for leads. What’s even better? They are also yielding above average conversion rates and very short sales cycles.

Why the concern?

They want to make a change. A gut-level logical change. They want to adjust lead distribution to reward their current top performers. The new system would round robin (push) leads into each of these selected performers until they hit an allowance cap. Then the lower performers would be eligible for their first fresh leads of the day.

I have been in the Internet lead business for over a decade and have seen about every lead allocation process you can imagine–this one is no exception. So, here are the most probable outcomes and fallacies to this lead distribution scheme:

• Top performers don’t need to be hungry anymore, leads just became free
• Conversion and contact rates are likely to decline for top performers
• Managers now must monitor queues for aging leads or unavailable agents
• Opens the flood gates for multiple “special” allocation groups
• False assumption that leads received in the morning are best (actually research shows weekend leads are the highest converting)
• Good news: Lower performers forced concentration on older leads typically increases their performance

There are certainly exceptions. Lead management is something that should be continually reviewed and optimized for market and organizational changes. However, caution to the wise beware of unwinding good behaviors your current system has enforced.

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