The CRAP Report

I hate being sick.  I know I’m not the only one out there who does, but I just want to get that out of the way.  Regardless, back to blogging!

So, last week I shared some thoughts with you on whether or not your sales prospecting vendor was listening to you and whether or not your business development reps were listening to your prospects.  Today, however, I want to ask you if you’re listening to your teleprospecting vendor?  If you don’t have someone providing your sales organization with qualified opportunities, maybe you’ve got a team doing that in-house for you, in which case, I would pose the same question.  They need you, you know, if your project with them is going to be successful or not.  No B2B lead generation provider is an island!  So what about you then?  Are you listening to your teleprospecting team?

I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the most successful teleprospecting campaigns that I’ve managed had at least one thing in common – a client who listened.  It is the rare project that succeeds where a client is not really “all in” with us.  I could never understand why someone would want to acquire someone to generate sales qualified leads for them, yet never really participate in the process.  Look, I’m not saying that I want a client to do our job for us, certainly not.  I do need them to listen, though.  There are, however, three questions you should be paying high levels of attention to from your teleprospecting team: 

1. Can you help us with your list?
2. Can you listen in on calls with us?
3. Can you help in closing the loop with sales?

First off, you’ve got to answer the question of “can you help us with your list?”  Your vendor shouldn’t be looking for you to give you the Glengarry leads, but at the same time, you should be able to provide a framework around the contents of your list.  I’ve worked with several clients who were quite good at segmenting out which lists our teleprospectors should be calling into and what product they should be qualifying for.  Conversely, I’ve worked with several clients who just threw lists at me and said, “here, you sort it out.”  Help your vendor or inside team when they ask for your help in managing their list.  The biggest, and I mean BIGGEST, help you can give here is to make sure that if you’ve given lists to them, that you’ve scrubbed the list of your current customers and companies that are not a good fit for you.

Second, answer the question, “can you listen in on calls with us?” with a resounding, “YES!”  I’m in awe every time I ask a client to do that and they tell me that they don’t have the time.  Really?  You’ve got the money to invest in teleprospecting, yet you can’t find a couple of hours to listen to how your message is being delivered to the masses?  This one is huge, folks.  If your vendor or inside folks ask you to shadow on calls with their BDR’s, do it.  You need to do it because you can course correct any messaging that is a little awry, and you need to do it because if lead production is not where you want it to be, you can listen in on live prospecting conversations to find out why.  You need to do it because your spending money on it, and every hour spent by a BDR hunting for your perfect prospect is a direct factor in seeing your Marketing Return on Investment (mROI).  Whether you’ve got a vendor acquired or an inside team, listening in on teleprospecting calls is a must.

Lastly, when your vendor or in-house team asks, “can you help in closing the loop with sales?” you need to.  In cases where you’ve got a vendor making your teleprospecting calls, you really need to lend a hand when asked.  Your vendor should be able to handle closing the loop themselves, but we know how sales reps can be when we’re looking for their feedback.  Typically, they’re too busy giving demos, meeting prospects, or putting proposals together to do so; however, to truly see your mROI, you need their feedback.  Your sales folks are only going to respond to vendors so much as they’ve been bugged and bugged to do so by someone on the inside, and for better or for worse, that inside person is you.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve hired someone else to find sales qualified leads for you or you have your own team doing so in-house, make sure you’re listening to them when they’re asking for your help.  The more you’re involved, the better the results; and that’s what we want after all, right?