Tag Archives: lead management

From Junk Lead to Major Account: A Lesson for Inbound Sales Consultants

In my previous position at InsideSales.com one of my primary responsibilities was to respond to marketing generated leads. These came in the form of interested parties filling out web forms to access white papers, downloading a trial of our award winning PowerDialer for Salesforce, and viewing our inside sales research. Often times people would fill out junk information into the web form to avoid our team from contacting them. I remember one lead in particular that falsified a name, phone number, and company information, but the email address was correct. From the email address I was able to track down the company website, and from there I was able to track down the phone number. After a brief conversation with the receptionist he pointed me in the right direction and I was able to get in touch with the original person that filled out the web form (and was able to do so while they were still on our website). Two months later they were one of our biggest accounts at InsideSales.com

The moral of the story is to treat every inbound lead like gold. Look for clues when the information is not correct. Get to the lead fast and be persistent. Do not accept what you are given, but nurture a lead with the vision as to what it could become. If you do, you might just land your biggest account!

Inside Sales Managers: Don’t Waste Your Time Cutting the Pie (Make it Bigger)

In a previous blog post Jonathan Miller, Sales Manager at InsideSales.com, described the impossible sales trinity: equal distribution, defined parameters, and lead priority. In this post he stated that it is impossible for sales teams to attain all three criteria without sacrificing sales productivity. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Sadly most sales manager spend far too many resources figuring out how to divide the “pie.” Typically, they try to settle situations in which one sales rep encroaches on the other’s territory after it was divided or two business development associates unknowingly call the same company. Instead managers should be focusing their efforts on value added activities for their sales teams, that is: How can I make the pie bigger? Here are a few ideas:

  • Track Key Metrics such as lead source and close rates. Track major metrics that influence buying. These may include local, size of company and lead source. Compile lots of data. More is better to start.
  • Begin to mine this data. Run probabilities such as: Given the company is a Boston based real estate company and has 20 brokers, what is the probability that Erik will close this deal versus John? If Erik’s close rate is only 5% and John’s is 10% for this lead profile the lead will be routed to John. In actuality the algorithm used at InsideSales.com is much more complex.

This is what I mean when I say it is the obligation of sales managers to make the pie bigger. It is their jobs to not merely “deal the deck of cards” but to “stack it the deck” for their sales reps.