4 Sep
“All [I am] saying…is give [the message] a chance…”
Posted in Lead Generation, Sales Prospecting, Tele-prospecting by Chris 2 Comments“This is a disaster!”
That’s how one of my clients described our first month working for him. Really selling myself, huh? I’ll tell you what, I agreed with him, it was a disaster and I can tell you why: the project suffered from being managed on the client side by a CEO who wasn’t a marketing person.
One of the keys to a successful B2B lead generation project is making sure that you have proper management levels on both sides of the partnership. In the instance that I’m referring to above, my main point of contact on the client side was a CEO who was not responsible for marketing, or corporate sales, much less telesales; somehow though, he was responsible for managing the relationship from their side. Although he was a nice guy, and was obviously great at running technology companies as he was the CEO, he didn’t have an understanding of a key aspect in the beginning stages of any sales prospecting campaign, and that is to give the message a chance. Clients spend a lot of time getting their message put together, and then they give that to a lead generation firm to get it “teleprospecting” ready. The message that finally gets green-lit for phone calls needs to be given a chance (read: more than a few weeks) to really fail or succeed on its own.
With this particular client, he felt the need to keep adjusting the message if my BDR and I didn’t produce a lead. There wasn’t a day that went by that there wasn’t some change to our teleprospecting script. There was more tweaking going on to this script than there is to waitress’ at a geriatric field trip to your local Hooters (c’mon, you know that’s true).
What I’m trying to say is this: If you’ve partnered with a firm to find you qualified sales opportunities, channel sales opportunities, or any type of sales leads, give the message a chance to succeed or fail. It’s my opinion that the script needs at least three solid weeks of phone calls behind it before it’s considered a bad script. Now, you may need more or less time depending on your target market’s reaction, like if someone actually tells you it sucks, but rule of thumb should be three weeks.
You know what’s funny about that client of mine and I? They probably weren’t ready for lead gen in the first place.
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It’s You, Not Me | The CRAP Report
on December 10 2009
[...] because no one is saying anything with any level of consistency. I’ve said it before, but you’ve got to give the message a chance, and one longer that three days. Sometimes it takes a week before we generate a lead for a new [...]
Brian Berlin
on March 22 2010
Chris,
We’re in the same business. I experienced a similar situation with a client that was in total denial about his company’s position in the targeted market. He insisted that the lack of appointments was due to our inability to pitch the message accurately. I showed him data that clearly indicated the prospect got it, didn’t need it and didn’t want it. When it appeared we were going to be the fall guy, I terminated the agreement and moved on.
Following this, I now screen potential clients more carefully to see if they have done their homework on the market size, likely targets and receptivity to the message. I listen for comments like “there must be a gazillion companies that can use this”.