Ah yes – you know where that line comes from, don’t you?  While country music is not necessarily my go-to choice of music genres, I really love the song The Gambler by Kenny Rogers.  I love it for a couple of reasons, really.  Growing up, I can remember listening to it in my parents’ living room, on their 8-track player no less!  There’s a nostalgic factor to that song that can take me right back to that living room some 30 years ago.  I also like that song because I enjoy playing poker; Texas Hold ‘Em for me, thanks.  It doesn’t get any more cliché than listening to that song while playing, but it means more to me because I do play (not well at all, in fact).  How does this relate to teleprospecting, though?  Well, I’ve got to tell that when you’re dealing with business development reps, sometimes you really do need to know when to fold ‘em.

We’ve all had them, right?  Employees that we LOVE and could never imagine working without.  Then, something happens, and all of sudden you’re like, “why have I been holding on to this person for so long?”  If you’re partnering with an organization to provide you with sales qualified opportunities or maybe you’re managing a team of teleprospectors yourself, but regardless of which, there’s going to come a time when you need to let go of one of your BDR’s.  The way I see it, there are three instances (barring an HR issue) that should cue you as to when it’s time to fold ‘em, and let them go: 

1. Productions been gone – for a while.
2. They’ve become a negative influence on your culture.
3. They’re change averse.

The first one is easily the most obvious – productions been gone, for a while.  Look, if you’ve got a BDR and they’re not producing for you, you can do one of two things – you can figure out why or you can just let them go.  I think most of us would always opt for the former, but in the cases where you can’t, for the life of you, figure out why they’re not producing anymore, then it’s time to help them transition on to something else.  Let’s say, too, that you’ve got a BDR who you really enjoy working with; they’re always positive and always contributing to your corporate culture.  The problem is that they’re just not cutting it like they used to.  Maybe in the past you could get 10 to 15 fully qualified sales opportunities out of them, and now you’re lucky to get five or six.  Regardless of how you feel about them, it’s time to move them off of your team (or your vendor’s team).  Be friends with them outside of the office, sure, but don’t let that connection drag you down because of their lack of performance.  Again, I know this one’s obvious but it’s no less important to stress.

Second, when you have a BDR who’s become a negative influence on your culture, it’s time to let them go.  You know who this rep is, they’re the one that’s always got something to say and doesn’t care who’s around to hear it.  It’s always uncomfortable and always negative and always demeaning to someone.  They’re not happy with the account they’re on, they’re not happy with the team they’re working with, and their numbers are never where they’re at because it’s someone else’s fault.  Goodness gracious, get rid of them!  Now sometimes, that negative person is really good at the job.  In that case, I still advocate letting that individual go.  It’s not worth it to the rest of the good people that you have working with and for you.  Negativity in a teleprospecting bullpen is like a cancer – I’ve watched it first hand, and you’ve got to deal with it quickly before it spreads.

Lastly, when you’ve got a BDR who’s change averse, it may be a sign that it’s time to fold ‘em.  These folks can have you or your trainers sit with them, listen in on calls, and give them tons of feedback on areas of improvement, and when you sit with them days later, they’ve neglected all of your suggestions.  These BDR’s just can’t get it together in terms of implementing new ways of doing things.  They’re stuck in a rut, stuck in old ways of thinking, and they don’t want to do anything about it.  Get rid of them.  You don’t need that, nor do your clients.

What do you think?  There are other reasons for “folding” a BDR – what did I miss?

Photo Credit:  Alex Stoen on Flickr

If you’re like me and my friends, you were pretty hyped up for last night’s season premiere of LOST.  I came to the game late on this one, having to watch three seasons on DVD (which by the way, is actually more fun because you can just keep watching episode after episode).  If you don’t know what LOST is, it’s a show about survivors of a plane crash and their adventures on the island that they crashed on.  To tell you anymore within the confines of this blog would break the space-time continuum.  I’d say it’s probably one of the most well developed shows in TV history; that’s just my limited opinion though.  As I was discussing last night’s two-hour opening with some of the BDR’s at work today, it got me thinking – how can you keep your teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their sales prospecting calls?

If you’ve got an in-house team of B2B lead generators or maybe you’re partnering with a vendor to provide you with sales qualified leads, naturally you want to make sure that the folks representing you and your organization over the phone are as effective as possible.  Teleprospectors, for the most part, make a ton of dials every day, and depending on who they talk to, there are times when conversations can be very dizzying.  I think there are three ways we can help BDR’s from becoming “lost” on their teleprospecting calls: 

1. Ensure they know who they’re calling.
2. Know when to call your prospects.
3. Help them to control the conversation.

The first way we can help teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their calls is to ensure they know who they’re calling.  I’ve had many clients who’ve told me that they’re not sure who they want my BDR’s to speak with.  Okay – big red flag here!  Help your BDR’s by nailing down the top two or three titles in an organization who would want to buy your product or service.  If you’re doing your due-diligence, you should already be creating buyer personas, as marketing strategist David Meerman Scott points out in The New Rules of Marketing and PR (which by the way just came out with a second edition).  By understanding exactly who is going to buy your solution or service, you can help your BDR’s to target those titles on their teleprospecting calls.  They’ll keep from becoming lost because you will have given them a mark with which they can align their lead-gen compass by.

The second way we can help teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their calls is to know when to call your prospects.  Appointment setting guru Mike Damphousse blogged about the best time to make lead gen calls after reading sales management expert Gerhard Gschwandther’s highlights on an MIT/InsideSales.com study of outbound prospecting lead conversion.  Mike points out himself the most effective time to make teleprospecting calls, and you can read that here.  The take-away from this is that if we can help our BDR’s figure out the most likely time that they’re prospects are going to be in their office, we can increase the possibility of those prospects becoming sales qualified leads.

Lastly, we can help our teleprospectors from becoming “lost” on their calls by helping them to control the conversation.  There have been plenty of times when I’ve sat in with rookie BDR’s who have had prospects run them ragged on a call.  They get off the phone, head spinning, saying, “What the hell just happened!?”  We can help our BDR’s take control of the conversation just by giving them better qualification questions to ask.  I think we can agree that most folks like to talk about themselves, and by helping our BDR’s to ask more poignant, pain-eliciting questions, we keep the ball in their court by keeping the prospect talking.  It’s not always going to work, because we’re dealing with another human on the end of the line, but for the most part, if we can help our BDR’s to control conversations with better questions, and then couple that with a better understanding of the technology or service their calling on, they’re certainly going to get “lost” less.

What do you think?  What can you add to the list?

On Tuesday I shared with you a link to lead generation expert The Funnelholic’s The Marketing Hipster Dictionary, Part I.  Today, he posted part two with some help of folks like The Lord of The Leads Tom Scearce (on Twitter @TLOTL) and Chris Jablonski (on Twitter @cjablonski).  The Funnelholic certainly more than gets by with a little help from his friends, adding words like “Return on Contribution” and “Buyer Engagement.” 

My favorite: 

49.  Trapping the chicken in the courtyard:  A semi-obscure “Rocky II” reference/metaphor describing the relentless and often frustrating pursuit of repeatable marketing and sales success. “I feel like a Kentucky Fried idiot.” — Rocky Balboa (@TLOTL)

You can check out The Marketing Hipster Dictionary, Part II here.

Nice work guys!

Last week I blogged about things that you need to think about before you decide to build your own in-house teleprospecting team,  where I tried to get folks thinking about some of the questions that they may not have considered, and hopefully offer some insight into the difficulty of creating their own teleprospecting team.  Today I was thinking – what if someone had all of those things covered?  What if someone decided to build their own team and had been an experienced, successful teleprospector?  What if they knew exactly what their ideal BDR looked like and what if they really knew how to measure their team’s success?  It certainly isn’t beyond the scope of possibilities that if you’ve decided to build your own team that you already know how to answer these questions.  As a follow up, then, I’d like to offer some additional questions that you should think about.

So, let’s say that you’ve got yourself your own teleprospecting team – now what?  The way I see it, there are a few questions that you need to ask yourself once you get to this point: 

1. You’ve done teleprospecting before and you were successful at it.  Do you know the people you should surround yourself with so that you can focus on managing your team?
2. You’ve hired the right BDR’s, but do you know how to train them?
3. You know what metrics to measure to determine your team’s success, but do you know how to improve them when they’re not successful?

Congrats!  You’ve done teleprospecting before and you were successful at it.  You’re already way ahead of the game, but, do you know the people you should surround yourself with so that you can focus on managing your team?  There’s a lot going on from an operations perspective regarding the management of a successful teleprospecting team.  Who’s going to build out your team’s CRM so that it’s optimal for the BDR’s?  Who’s going to do your list scrubbing for you (and by God, get someone to do that!)?  Who’s going to manage all of the call metrics for you?  Who’s going to write and rewrite messaging and email templates?  Those are just a few questions that need answering.  Can you do all of this yourself?  Absolutely.  I’m not so sure you should be, though.  By determining who you should have working with you besides your BDR’s, you’ll be able to spend more time focused on managing your BDR’s rather than having to be sidetracked by all of those other issues that come up.

You’ve hired the right BDR’s, but do you know how to train them?  Just because you were a successful teleprospector doesn’t mean that you know how to train someone else to be just as successful.  They say those who can’t, teach.  I think that’s bunk.  Teaching isn’t easy.  Make sure that if you’ve got your own team of teleprospectors that you know how to train them.  And I’m not just talking about getting them up and running so that they know how to make a cold/warm call.  That’s all well and good for a little while.  I’m talking about keeping them sharp.  I’m talking about knowing how to keep them maintained as a well oiled sales opportunity qualifying machine.  I’m talking about having a team of folks who are constantly improving their skills, and better yet, are being taught to do so by you.  It’s fantastic if you were a really great BDR, but if you’re not a teacher or a trainer, take some time to plan out your team’s improvement process from an expertise perspective.

Lastly, you may know what metrics to measure to determine your team’s success, but do you know how to improve them when they’re not successful?  You’ve got a great connect rate but your lead rate is low, why is that?  Is that because you’re solution or a service is a “nice to have” or is because your BDR is afraid to pull the trigger on asking for a meeting?  Your lead rate is off the charts, but your connect rate is miserable – how come?  Does that even matter?  What about your leads that are hitting pipeline versus the ones that aren’t; do you know why?  Why is it that your BDR’s get off a call and feel like they’ve got a great opportunity but your sales rep says the lead sucked?  Who’s wrong in this case?  These are just a few questions you need to ask yourself regardless of whether or not your team is successful.  If they’re not though, and your boss has the metrics that you’ve determined for him/her that are what you should be measured by, you need to know how to improve.  You need to be able to determine when you need to add a little manpower to this campaign, or throttle down the activity to that campaign.  You need to be able to receive feedback on all of your team’s opportunities from each person that is a recipient of a lead, and you need to know how to get that feedback from the toughest reps who are not fans of your team.  It’s one thing to know how to measure your success, it’s a whole different animal knowing how to improve upon them.

Hopefully I’ve given you some things to think about.  If you have any questions about building your team, or improving them, feel free to give me a shout.  I know a lot of folks that would be happy to talk with you, and it would be my pleasure to help you get in touch with them.

Think about your prospects for a minute.  You’ve probably got a list or a database chock full of folks that you really want to do business with.  Sure you want to do business with them because that means money for you and your organization, but I’m sure there are those that you want to do business because of the weight that their name carries in their respective industries.  Now take a minute and think about how you reach out to those folks, from a teleprospecting perspective.  Maybe you’re not doing that right now but you want to.  Do you prospect your prospects the way YOU want to or the way THEY want to be?  This question came to me today after reading a blog entry in the Marketing Mélange by Mike Frichol.

Frichol’s article, Are You Selling or Facilitating Buying for Customers?, purports that if prospective buyers, Marketing, and Sales were all aligned, the sales cycle might not take so long.  He’s right.  So, while I’ll leave it to the Marketing and Sales experts to help you align those departments with your future customers, I do see three ways that your teleprospecting teams can do all they can to quicken their aspect of the buying process.  The way I see it, there are three things you should do to make sure that your BDR’s are aligning themselves with how your prospects buy: 

1. Make sure they understand your current clients’ pains and how your solutions/services alleviated them.
2. Make sure they spend more time listening to your prospects, rather than talking.
3. Make sure they touch base with their prospects throughout the lead nurturing process with relevant collateral.

First, if you’re BDR’s are going to prospect the way your future customers want to be prospected to, you need to make sure they understand your current clients’ pains and how your solutions/services alleviated them.  This is simple, sure, but how many of your teleprospectors have taken the time to do that.  Better yet, how many of their mangers have spent time with them talking about this specifically?  I’m guessing not many.  The point here is that if your BDR’s have a good understanding of WHY people have bought from you in the past (see, they’re on the front end of the process, so they usually aren’t there when the decision maker signs the contract), they’re going to have greater likelihood of being able to empathize with your prospects.  People don’t care how much your BDR’s know until they know how much your BDR’s care.  When your teleprospectors can share with your prospects how your organization has alleviated real pains for folks in the same situation as them, turning them into a sales qualified lead is not far behind.

Second, make sure your BDR’s spend more time listening to your prospects, rather than talking.  I’ve said this before, but your teleprospectors need to focus on not just hearing your prospects, but actually listening to them.  Nobody wants to be prospected to by an order taker.  You feel this pain?  Do you have money?  Who makes the decision?  When do you want to buy?  The amount of time your teleprospectors are actually talking should be about a quarter of the time versus the amount of time your prospects should be talking with them.  The take-away here is that if you’re the one building qualification scripts for your BDR’s, make sure that the scripts are flush with open ended questions.  For the most part, folks love to talk about themselves, and if they’ve got problems and are mad enough about those problems, they’ll talk a lot.  Help your prospects talk by crafting better qualification questions so your BDR’s can spend more time listening.

Lastly, to ensure that your BDR’s are prospecting the way your future clients want to be prospected to, make sure they touch base with their prospects throughout the lead nurturing process with relevant collateral.  Unfortunately, you don’t pass a sales qualified lead every time you talk with a prospect.  If you do, let me know how you do it.  That being said, your teleprospectors are going to have a group of folks in their pipeline who are interested in your services, but who are not in need just yet.  I’m sure they follow up every now and then with a call here, a voicemail or maybe an email there, and that is great.  I think if you want to really make an impact on your prospective clients, your BDR’s should start sending relevant collateral with no other motive behind it besides being helpful.  Maybe they came across a blog article, or came across a webcast that would be pertinent to your prospect.  They should be sending those along, building credibility with those interested prospects.  That way, when it does come time to buy, your prospects will remember who reached out to them in a more consultative way and will likely call back to set up time to speak with a product specialist.

At the very least, this is certainly something to think about, and I’m glad that Frichol planted this seed in my brain – it’s a reminder that teleprospecting can always move the sales process along faster by being more efficient.  What do you think?  Can you add to my list?

So you’re thinking about building an in-house teleprospecting team, huh? I mean, someone has to follow up on all of those inbound leads you’re getting, right? Maybe you’re hosting webinars and need those attendees followed up on, right? The most logical thing to do would be to build some sort of qualification machine to follow up on all the contacts you’ve got from all of the marketing programs/events/campaigns you’ve run (and more than likely never got around to getting in touch with). You could give them to your sales guys, no doubt. Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist over at the inside sales consulting firm, The Bridge Group, blogged about this with some help from Kirko Papjanis over at her blog, Inside Sales Experts Blog, where Kirko urges folks to put their sales reps in front of prospects sooner. While I agree with him, it’s been my experience that not all sales reps are willing to be put in front of prospects without having them fully qualified, nor are they as effective. So, if you’re thinking about building an in-house teleprospecting team to generate sales qualified leads, there are some things you need to think of.

Running a B2B lead generation team may or may not be as easy/difficult as you may think it to be. It all depends on what your background is. Sales prospecting may be a passion of yours, it may not. Regardless, if you’re in the position where you’re determining whether or not you should build one, I think that there are three things you need to seriously consider before taking the leap to have your own inside teleprospecting team:

1. Do you know how to qualify a lead over the phone? Have you done it before?
2. Do you know the type of candidate who makes the best teleprospecting rep?
3. Do you know how to measure a teleprospecting team’s success?

Do you know how to qualify a lead over the phone? Have you done it before? These are important questions that you need to ask yourself, and I believe that if the answer is no, you need to rethink this idea altogether. If you’ve never spent time qualifying a prospect and expect to lead people who are going to do that for you, you really have your work cut out for you. I’m not saying that you need to be some sort of a cold calling guru, but you need to have actually done the job you’re putting a team together to do. You can’t lead people to places you’ve never been, and on top of that, if your own qualification skills are at a 3 (on a scale of 1 – 10, with 10 being tops), you’re never going to be able to train your team to be better than a 3.  John Maxwell calls it the Law of the Lid in his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – “…your organization or business will not rise beyond the level your leadership allows.” I’m not saying you can’t do it, I’m saying that if you’re going to, you’ve got a lot to learn.

Do you know the type of candidate who makes the best teleprospecting rep? You need to think about this question, too. You can’t hire just anybody to qualify sales opportunities for you. Like Charlie Bowdre said in Young Guns, “..you can’t be any geek off the street. Gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean? Earn your keep.” Sure, in this case I’m substituting qualification skills for a gun, but the sentence is no less true. Hire someone who’s done it before and they may bring in poor habits from someone else who trained them. Hire someone who’s too green, and they’re going to get eaten alive by rude or obnoxious prospects (not that they exist, right?). If you’re going to build a team in-house, you’ve got to know who the best candidate is before you can start.

Do you know how to measure a teleprospecting team’s success?  Teleprospecting is more than just making phone calls and qualifying leads. Those are the two most important aspects of it, yes, but a team’s success is more than just the number of dials made and the number of leads passed. You’ve got to think of other things like connect rates, lead rates, feedback percentages, leads to forecast percentage, etc. If you’ve never worked IN business development from a teleprospecting perspective, then how do you know what metrics are the most important? You’ve got a lot of research to do there. Again, I’m not saying that you can’t do it, you just need to prepare. A lot. You also don’t want someone else in your organization telling you what they’re going to be measuring your team’s success on – you need to set the tone for that. If sales prospecting falls under marketing’s direction, you don’t want poor sales follow up to be a detriment to your success, and if you fall under sales’ direction, you don’t want poor marketing efforts to do the same.

Have I missed anything? What do you think? Also, please feel free to contact me directly if you have questions about building a team yourself.

With today being December 31st, the last day of the calendar year in 2009, I wanted to continue (but not finish) my countdown, or my top five “wants,” for your teleprospectors in 2010.  If you were here on Monday, you read that my first desire for your BDR’s in the coming year was more confidence.  I’ve shared with you many times over the last four months about the importance of confidence for your BDR’s.  Confidence makes them better teleprospectors – you can’t argue that.  What else, though, should you want your BDR’s to have, though?  Well, good thing you stopped by!  Here are my numbers two and three top “wants” for your B2B lead generators in 2010.

The second thing I think your BDR’s need most in 2010 is a great source of data from which to prospect from.  Last week I shared with you how imperative it is that your teleprospectors have recent, accurate, and pre-touched marketing lists from which to call from.  Better lists for your BDR’s means that you’ll have a greater likelihood of passing more qualified sales opportunities to your sales team.  There are many ways in which you can go about obtaining better call lists for your teleprospectors, from creating one by hand to purchasing to just renting a list.  Regardless of which road you choose, make sure that the data you’re getting is as up to date as possible.  

In addition to that, make sure that your cold call lists are current, too.  Your BDR’s should be using names from your cold call lists to replace the individuals from your warmer lists as they get cycled out of the prospecting process.  As the warmer names move to being either not relevant or not interested, make sure that you’ve got a great cold calling list to backfill for your teleprospectors.  I have been involved in projects before where the names that my client said were “warm” weren’t really so “warm” at all, but their cold calling lists were so good, we were still able to meet our sales qualified lead objectives.  In 2010, I want your teleprospectors to have a great source of data from which to prospect from.

My third want for your teleprospectors in 2010 is a compensation plan that pays out on the quality of their work.  If what business development is supposed to do is find fully qualified sales opportunities, then don’t you agree with me that the folks doing the qualification should be comped based on the quality of their work?  Sure, put call numbers, conversation or talk time numbers, and lead numbers in front of them.  Those numbers are all important and have their place in teleprospecting, but use those numbers to spur on better qualified leads.  Give smaller perks or bonuses for hitting those numbers, but the majority of their bonus should be based on how well the leads they passed over panned out.  Call it a positive feedback percentage, a closed loop percentage, but something that is based on the “quality” of the leads that they passed over will ensure that your sales team is getting the best that your BDR’s can bring.

The benefit to a teleprospecting manager or someone who runs a team of BDR’s that implements a compensation plan like this is that you’ll eventually be able to weed out the bad from the good.  Those BDR’s that you have on your team that may not be as effective will be easier to spot because come bonus time, their quality numbers just won’t measure up to the best.

Better lists and better compensation – two “musts” for your BDR’s in 2010, and only you can make it happen!  Tomorrow, I’ll cover numbers four and five on my “want” list for your teleprospectors next year.  

Happy New Year’s Eve to you all!

As 2009 comes to a close, I’m thinking about the fact that I love lists – you know, countdown lists.  The “top ten” this or the “top five” that.  Whether I really agree with the person making the list or not, I still like reading someone else’s opinion.  Over the course of the next week, I want to share with you a few thoughts on what I want for your teleprospectors in 2010.  You can call it my top five “wants” for your teleprospectors in 2010.

If your BDR’s are like mine, chances are they spend most of their day trying to get in touch with people who don’t want to be spoken to.  If and when they get those folks on the phone, they are, at times, subjected to some of the most “not so nice” attitudes that prospects can conjure up.  I don’t care how tough you are, teleprospecting can take a lot out of you; and it can drain your confidence if you’re left hearing a lot of “no’s” all day.

That being said, what I want for your teleprospector in 2010 is more confidence.  I want your telepropsectors to feel like no matter what they come across on the phones, they’re ready for it.  Help your BDR’s to prospect better by building their confidence on the phones in 2010.  I see three ways that we can do that:

1.  Knowledge is power – help your BDR’s to be as confident as they can be by making sure that they’re as knowledgeable as they can be about the solutions or services that they’re calling on.  Having a solid understanding about how things work brings confidence with it.

2.  If you build it, they will (be)come – help your BDR’s to be as confident as they can be by involving them in the process of developing the messaging that they’ll be delivering to your prospects.  If your BDR’s feel like they’ve been part of the creation process, they’re going to feel a greater sense of ownership to their teleprospecting script.  A greater sense of ownership means they’ll feel a sense of pride while using “their” script, thus becoming more confident in their work.

3.  Practice makes perfect - help your BDR’s to be more confident in 2010 by spending time role playing with them.  Put some thought into it, too.  Don’t just role play for the sake of saying that you’ve done it.  Put together a plan to take your BDR’s through the toughest role plays you can think of, and then take them through them again.  Will all of their prospecting calls go the same way?  No, not at all, but if they’ve got practice dealing with tough calls (even fake ones), chances are they’re going to feel more confident when the really difficult ones come their way.

That does it for today – stay tuned, though!  Tomorrow brings with it Part 2 of What I Want for Your Telepropsectors in 2010.  See you then!

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is one of my favorite Christmas stories.  I love the idea of someone getting visited by four ghosts to show him how the errors of his ways can determine his future.  It’s a story about second chances, too.  Ebenezer Scrooge is a terribly wicked man at the beginning of the tale, and by the end, he’s barely recognizable because his outlook on life is a complete turn from what people had been used to.  How can anyone not enjoy a story like that!?  You know, the ending of one year and the beginning of another brings that same feel of a second chance with it.  When it comes to your B2B lead generation efforts and your sales prospecting campaigns, what are you going to do differently to make 2010 better than 2009?

Obviously, in order to answer that question, you need to look back on 2009 and determine what worked and what didn’t work.  You’ve got to run reports on the campaigns that you initiated and on the programs that you kicked off and look at the results of each.  Maybe you outsourced some of your lead generation efforts to a third party vendor this year and determined that next year, you’re just going to build your own inside teleprospecting team to drive qualified leads to your sales team.  Maybe, though, you had your own inside team this year and they just didn’t perform to the levels that you needed them to and you’re seriously thinking that maybe some of these “outsourcers” may actually have a bead on sales prospecting.  Whatever you do in 2010, here are three areas that I think you need to focus on: 

1. Focus on creating a prospecting strategy.
2. Focus on better teleprospecting lists.
3. Focus on making your BDR’s better.

The first area that I think you need to focus on in 2010 is to create a prospecting strategy.  A prospecting strategy, mind you, that goes beyond smiling and dialing.  Put some thought into what works and what doesn’t in terms of getting prospects to call your BDR’s back or return their emails.  How many times should you call a prospect per day?  Per week?  When should you and when shouldn’t you leave a voicemail message when you get an answering machine?  How often should you follow up with an email?  These are all things that you need to have some sort of a plan around.  If you look back at 2009 and feel like your teleprospecting efforts didn’t go quite the way you wanted them to, maybe you should start by looking at the strategy you used to get yourself there.  Having a well thought out process in place for your teleprospectors to follow is key to having a better 2010, lead generation-wise.

The second area that you should focus on in 2010 is to get better teleprospecting lists for your BDR’s to call into.  Easier said than done, right?  Easy is SO 2009 my friends; it’s time to work harder than we ever have, and that includes grunt work like list building.  I’m not saying that YOU specifically have to get a better list, but make sure someone in your organization is tasked with getting an improved database for your teleprospectors to call into.  If you can afford it, have someone generate the list for you from scratch.  Get your targets in all of your territories identified and then task someone to build that database of contacts from the ground up.  If your BDR’s have a better list from which to prospect from, and they use that list to fortify all of the other inbound marketing data sets that you’re going to generate throughout 2010, your pipeline should escalate very quickly.  You do what you want, obviously, but this is one area worth spending time on in the New Year.

Lastly, regarding your B2B lead generation efforts in 2010, you should focus on making your BDR’s better.  This one should be a no brainer for you; better BDR’s equal better sales qualified leads.  Put some programs together for you teleprospectors to make them better at generating leads.  Put together a book club and choose a book about sales or marketing to read together, get trainers to come in on a quarterly basis and run seminars for them, create a mentoring program – I don’t really care what you do for them, but the point is that you should do something.  Their jobs can get monotonous and they are the frontline of your organization to your prospects.  If you help them to be better at what they do, your prospects are going to have a better outlook on your organization as a whole because your BDR’s will feel more empowered because of the added effort you’ve put into making them better (that’s a mouthful, but no less true).  You want improvement in 2010 for your teleprospectors, then make your BDR’s better at their jobs.

Let me ask you, now – what are you going to do to change your prospecting efforts in 2010?

By now, I’m sure you’ve all seen the movie Jerry Maguire.  Pre couch-jumping Tom Cruise as a the titular character, Jerry Maguire, a slimy sports agent who has an epiphany and writes a dissertation on how ethics need to be brought back from the dead into an industry that would rather keep them buried.  Jerry’s manifesto gets leaked out to his entire company and he winds up getting fired by his friend.  Renee Zelwegger leaves with him and she and Jerry start their own sports rep agency.  Long story short, Jerry only has one client, wide receiver Rod Tidwell, played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. (who won an Academy Award for the role).  Rod is a very arrogant player who believes he is worth more than he is, and Jerry has to kowtow to him for most of the film.  There comes a point in the film where Jerry is trying to get Rod a new contract signed with the Arizona Cardinals.  After arguing back and forth about Rod not working hard enough to deserve to be paid what he wants, Jerry begs Rod to, “help me help you.”  Jerry wants Rod to help him out by proving to the Cardinals that he is really worth what he thinks he is.  I want the same thing Jerry does for my clients – for them to be happy and make a lot of money.  I need them to help me help them.

Working with all different kinds of technology companies, from small start ups to some of the big dogs, they all want the same thing – more qualified sales opportunities to put in front of their sales teams.  That’s good news for me, right?  That’s what I do!  There becomes a problem, though, when clients don’t necessarily have the time to wait for my teleprospecting team to build a pipeline of their own.  Sure, if we start calling into their targeted lists, we’re bound to find some low hanging fruit.  However, if we’re going to develop a lead nurturing program that will feed their sales teams with sales qualified leads, that is going to take time.  That isn’t going to happen overnight.  What I would say to those organizations out there that are looking to speed up the lead generation process would be this – “help me help you.”  Whether you’ve got an inside team qualifying leads for you or you’ve partnered with a B2B sales prospecting firm, there are three things you can do that will help them get sales qualified leads over to you faster: 

1. Give them recent data.
2. Give them accurate data.
3. Give them prospects that have been touched multiple times by the same message.

Okay, the first two are pretty obvious.  If you want sales qualified leads faster, put recent databases in front of your teleprospectors.  It does no good to come to the table with lists that are over a year old.  Sure, they’re good in a sense that you’re giving my folks more of an opportunity to find you a qualified lead over a longer period of time, but that’s not what you’re looking for, right?  Get yourself (and your teleprospectors) lists of the most recent tradeshow attendees, the most recent webinar attendees, and the most recent white paper downloads.  Put those lists in front of teleprospecting to have them QUALIFY first, rather than giving them right to sales.  Remember, sales has too much to think about in terms of running demos, putting together proposals, and hopefully, closing business.  Letting your BDR’s call into those databases first will most definitely put more qualified opportunities into the hands of your sales team, and do so in a faster manner because your team has a strategic call plan in place, right?  Of course they do.

Next, if you want sales qualified leads faster, give your teleprospectors accurate data.  Yes, I want them to have the most recent lists, but I want them to also have the most accurate lists, too.  Do you know how many times my BDR’s have called into lists (from my clients) and the list was flush with CLIENTS?  Do you know what that does to your reputation?  It makes it look like you can’t tell your ass from your elbow.  Make sure the lists that your teleprospectors call into have been culled through for current clients, or maybe in the unfortunate case, the client who left angrily.  Another thing, and don’t get me wrong here, I love list companies, but if you’ve bought lists for your BDR’s to call into, make sure you’ve got someone checking on that information and seeing that it’s accurate, too.  Just because you bought it yesterday doesn’t mean that the information is up to date as of yesterday.  If the name of the game, right now, is to get more sales qualified leads faster, having BDR’s call into lists that are full of people who no longer work at companies that no longer exist is only going to slow that process down.

Lastly, if you want sales qualified leads faster, give your BDR’s prospects that have been touched multiple times by the same message.  I’m getting at the inbound marketing hand raisers here.  Just because someone stopped by your website doesn’t mean their ready to buy yet.  I’m talking about putting into the hands of your BDR’s those prospects that have had a targeted marketing effort directed towards them and they have responded on multiple occasions.  For example, the folks who attended a webinar, downloaded an eBook, and visited a specific webpage on one of your solutions.  They’ve taken multiple actions on a particular solution and again, rather than giving these, albeit warmer leads, into your sales team’s hands (because, remember, they’re still not qualified yet), teleprospecting should still qualify them in the areas of pains and needs, timeframe, budget, and decision making process.  Giving those individuals to your teleprospectors is ultimately going to give your sales team fully qualified opportunities faster, which again, is why where here.

There you go – my thoughts on how you can “help me help you.”  What do you think?  What are some other ways that you can get more qualified leads into your sales team’s hands?