The CRAP Report

I’m not old enough to have had the chance to watch the original Mission: Impossible TV series from the late 1960’s – early 1970’s.  Although I had heard the theme song (which we all have – dun dun-dun-dun-dundun-dun-dun-dun), I never had the chance to watch the show.  I have, however, been a fan of the Mission: Impossible movies.  I love movies like that, you know, ones where different people with different specialties come together to accomplish a task?  Hell, I just wrote a four part series on The A-Team and how their specialties relate to the management of teleprospecting teams.  What I loved about Mission: Impossible the movie was how, after Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) was framed for being a mole, Hunt assembles his OWN Impossible Mission Force (IMF) to clear his name.  One of the characters that he recruits is a computer expert named Luther Stickell.  If Luther was good enough for top agent Ethan Hunt, let me tell you why you need a “Luther Stickell” on your lead generation team.

Luther Stickell, played in all three Mission: Impossible movies by Ving Rhames, was Ethan Hunt’s computer go-to guy.  In the story, Luther was a disavowed IMF agent who was enlisted by Hunt to help him clear his name as a suspected traitor.  Luther was responsible for everything computer related on all three missions.  I think that every good business development team needs a “Luther” on their team.  I’m not talking a government level computer hacking spy, but more along the lines of someone who is responsible for the data portion of your teleprospecting efforts.  There are three ways I think your sales prospecting team needs a “Luther”: 

1. For list management purposes.
2. For key performance reporting.
3. For call plan quality assurance.

First, I think all teleprospecting teams need a “Luther” for list management purposes.  I know just from making sales prospecting calls myself that there were times when managing my lists were easy, and there were times when it could be difficult.  A data person solves this issue.  It’s their responsibility to ensure that the lists used for teleprospecting purposes are continually being updated with fresh names to call.  If you’ve ever made prospecting calls (which I know you have) you know that lists can get stale quickly.  Stale names do nothing but delay the lead generation process.  A data person can be responsible for accumulating the data from current lists, and using all of the parameters (company size, revenue number, industry, etc.) to go out and build one from various list sources on the web, or, like one of the data folks I used to work with, just build it from scratch.  The thing here is that it really is a dirty job, but someone needs to do it.    Your “Luther” should be responsible for helping you and your BDR’s to manage your teleprospecting lists.

Second, all teleprospecting teams need a “Luther” for key performance reporting.  Quick – if I ask you what your team’s connect rate versus their lead rate is, who do you go to for that information?  Truth be told, you probably look in the mirror.  I think its really important that you have a data person responsible for accumulating that information for you when you need it.  This becomes more important for those of us in the sales prospecting and marketing services industry.  If you’ve got someone finding qualified sales opportunities for you, I know understanding key performance metrics on a weekly basis is of the utmost importance to you.  You’re spending your budget on someone else, outside of your organization, to find your sales team leads.  You want to know what their performance is.  You NEED to know what their performance is.  If you’ve got your own in-house team, really the need is the same.  You’re paying people to find sales qualified leads, and if they’re not, you need to know why.  Having someone who’s responsible for aggregating all of your key performance indicators becomes very important here.

Lastly, all teleprospecting teams need a “Luther” to ensure that your teleprospecting call plan is being followed.  We use Salesforce.com here, and I can go in at any given time and pull up a record for any of the projects that my team has worked on and I can tell you if the BDR on that project was following our strategic call plan or not.  Having a call plan is a must, but having someone who can check on ALL of your BDR’s to ensure they’re adhering to that call plan is – well, its an even bigger “must.”  If you’ve got a BDR or a team of BDR’s who may not be producing qualified sales opportunities at the rate that you want them to, one of the things you should investigate is whether or not they’re following your call plan.  If you’ve got a “Luther” on your team, you shouldn’t have to worry about that because part of their responsibility is doing random spot checks, quality assurance checks if you will, to make sure that those teleprospectors are following your call plan.  Now look, if the idea of a “call plan” is throwing you off and you don’t know what I’m talking about, we’ve got another issue entirely.  I can’t stress enough the importance of having a strategic call plan in place for your BDR’s to follow.  For additional information on call plans, see my colleague’s, Craig Ferrara’s, blog entry on the topic here.

There are other reason why having a data person is important to your teleprospecting team, but I think these three top the list.  Now watch your eyes!  This message will self-destruct in five seconds…