The CRAP Report

Okay, so you’re partnering up with a B2B lead generation firm to find you some qualified sales opportunities.  What should you expect in terms of key performance indicators?  There is more to passing leads than just smiling and dialing, so what should you know?  Thank your lucky stars that I’m here to tell you.  In part one of a three part series, I’ll tell you what you should be on the look out for.  In parts two and three, you’ll get more on what to be on the look out for.

One of the things you should be looking at is the number of conversations that a business development rep (BDR) is having on a weekly basis.  Passing highly qualified business opportunities is definitely a numbers game, no doubt, but the number that you should be concerning yourself with more so than the number of dials made per day is the number of quality conversations had per day.  You want to be on the lookout for a sales prospecting team that is going to be able to have meaningful business conversations on your part, and at a good clip each day.  If you have a rep who is focused on activity versus actual conversations had each day, then they’re focused on the wrong thing.  ANYBODY can make 100 calls per day, hell, even Russian space chimps can do that.  What you need to keep an eye on is the number of conversations had on your behalf each day.  It doesn’t matter that Joe the TeleRep made 80 dials for you on Monday; what matters is the number of times Joe the TeleRep spoke with someone and got a meaningful piece of information from them.  By meaningful, I mean more than just, “I’m on the phone right now, call me back later.”  The data that you can glean from a conversation report should tell you that quality sales opp’s are on their way.

If you’re working with a B2B lead generation firm, I’m telling you right now that one of the things you’ve got to keep your eye on is the number of conversations your team is having every day.  Conversations yield quality opportunities, and if the conversation number is low, you can expect that your lead flow will be, too.  High number of dials is great, but it’s the quality conversations that are going to actually deliver the lead to you.