On a recent guest post at the Bridge Group’s blog, author Henry Bruce brings up some research by Marketing Sherpa that states that 75% of all sales leads generated are going to buy at some point in the next 18-24 months.
Think about that for a minute.
A. Only 1 in 4 leads is ever totally non-productive. They may not convert now, or in the time frame the rep wants, but contrary to popular belief, it’s relatively rare for a sales lead to be total garbage. 75% of the active leads in our CRM systems RIGHT NOW are going to buy a product or service in our sector from somebody, somewhere in the next two years. So why not from you/me/us, if we’re the right fit?
B. It also seems to indicate that the need to intelligently score leads is now more critical than ever to prevent waste. 18-24 months is a long time, and no sales rep in their right mind is going to try and keep a prospect “on the hook” for a year-and-a-half. If they’re not buying now, stop wasting effort, the thought process goes, and use a long-term lead nurturing strategy . . . .
If by some serendipitous circumstance you were allowed to hang out at the InsideSales.com offices for day, you’d discover pretty quickly that we are passionate about the power of immediate lead response.
We help businesses get better sales intelligence, and effectively manage their sales and lead generation processes in a lot of ways. But we focus a lot of our efforts on immediate lead response for one simple reason:
It’s the #1 way to increase Web-generated leads’ contact and qualifying rates–and thus lead to more productive sales pipelines.
And the other reason we’re so zealous about it is that 65-70% of the business world frankly, well, sucks at it. (see our research with Dr. James Oldroyd, SKKU, Dreamforce ’08, Omniture Summit, and AA-ISP for proof).
In summary:
The aggregate data between the Dreamforce ’08, Dreamforce ’10, Omniture Summit, and AA-ISP Boston research studies shows that approximately 40 percent of all companies NEVER RESPOND A SINGLE TIME to a Web generated lead of any kind. Not “Follows up slowly and ineffectively.” Simply doesn’t do it at all.
Average response time for a first contact attempt OF ANY KIND (phone or email) for a Web-generated lead: 43 hours (when the MIT research shows […]
Inside Sales Research – Departments Keep Growing Because It’s a Win-Win-Win
5 October 2010 — Steve Watts
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There’s been a lot of talk ever since our 2009 InfoUSA study revealed that the inside sales industry was projected to grow at 7.5% per year over the next five years, while outside sales industry jobs is stagnating at 0.5% growth.
bNet Business’s Geoffrey James even sounded off on the topic, questioning the reasons behind the slow obsolescence of outside sales when the sales process and buying cycle have become even more “touch” intensive and complex.
In my mind, however, the trend is significant, but hardly inexplicable. The Web has made one of sales’ primary functions—distributing information to prospects—a much different activity than before. Even for complex purchases, there’s a wealth of information about available products and services, and the average prospect has significantly less of a need to rely on a sales rep to provide actionable information . . . .
Though published back in 2002, author John Warrilow’s book Drilling For Gold presents a fascinating take on the tried and true (some might say cliché) “80/20″ rule of sales and marketing—namely, that when it comes to small business selling, the rule should closer to 98/2.
Using a chart that breaks down accounts and prospects into a series of “buckets,” he demonstrates a process for evaluating the current profit levels of customers and prospects, and each account’s potential growth.
While Warrilow states that good qualitative research should back up the basic “Profit/Potential” profile, generally speaking the trick is to expend the highest levels of time, energy, and money not with the top 20 percent, but the top 2 percent of clients and prospects—the ones who are currently highly profitable, and have a high potential to remain so.
At some point, every sales manager on the planet has heard a sales rep gripe about how and when they’re getting their leads.
“Who’s deciding this?”
“Why aren’t I getting more leads?”
“Why aren’t I getting more leads from industry X / hot leads / leads for large accounts?”
Most companies struggle to find and keep a consistent stream of good, warm leads, and handing out a fresh, qualified lead can almost feel like an event in and of itself—but that doesn’t mean a rep asking these questions is out of line.
However the decision is made, the fact is that lead distribution is a selection process. Somewhere along the way, someone is making a decision about how leads are being handed out. Even if the decision is totally random / ad hoc, that’s still a decision . . . .
Inside Sales: Two Hidden Metrics of Prospecting That are Hurting Your Sales
14 July 2010 — Steve Watts
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Most of the common marketing and sales and metrics—click-throughs, impressions, sales cycle, revenue per deal—don’t really need an explanation. But there are two metrics where a lot of companies we’ve worked with have holes in their sales process.
How soon after a new Web lead comes in does a sales rep make the first contact attempt, and how long after it came in did they actually make contact? Every single piece of data we’ve ever researched shows that for Web-generated leads, immediate response is crucial . . . .
Warning: Your Employees’ Technology Skills (or Lack Thereof) Are Costing You Money
8 June 2010 — Steve Watts
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How much do your employees really know about technology?
Do you even ask the question?
Do you think it has any bearing on how functional, efficient, and well-managed your company is?
One of the startling things I discovered as a university instructor was that even the most recent generation of supposedly “tech savvy” college students were, in fact, technologically illiterate in a number of important ways.
Oh sure, they could text message with the best of them. And Web surfing and Facebook? Got that covered. Navigating a map in World of Warcraft and Call of Duty? Not a problem. Twittering your MySpace while Tweeting your iPhone? Check, check, check, and check.
But when it came to more important ideas—ideas that would apply daily to a modern business’s technology needs—they were remarkably clueless. Ideas like, “What’s the best way to categorically organize my digital files for easy retrieval across a company network?” were utterly foreign to them. “How do I ensure maximum compatibility of documents across computing platforms and programs?” “What are some simple ways I can write text content that is relevant for cataloging, storage, and retrieval for an SQL query?” Unless the student happened to be a computer science or IS major, they had […]
Technology has trained us to expect things, NOW. When I have a question I’ll Google it and millions of possible answers will be at my fingertips in .27 seconds. I forget that I used to have to go to the library or call a company by looking through the yellow pages.
I forgot my cell phone one day when I went to work. I was lost, unable to do things that not too long ago were impossible with a land line. I can call, text, email, tweet, find a restaurant, make a reservation, get turn by turn directions … hey there’s an app for just about anything.
A prospect who fills out a form on your website is looking for a solution, NOW. They have a problem and it’s unacceptable to contact them 2 days after or not at all.
inside|sales has done research with MIT professor, James Oldroyd, covering the topic of Lead Management with a goal to discover the best time to contact an interested prospect. The results surprised us, as we learned that companies don’t have the luxury of waiting 2 days to contact: or 2 hours. Whether you are a B2B company, or a B2C company, […]
The web has disrupted everything we know about sales and marketing. Even the time-honored practice of cold-calling has fallen by the wayside, and face-to-face selling, advertising, yellow pages, and direct mail are limping along. But in return, the Internet is opening up the greatest opportunities ever available for sales organizations who learn it’s secrets.
InsideSales.com was originally founded to generate cost effective leads through outbound cold-calling technology. We were the first web-based sales tracking Lead Management CRM system with fully integrated dialers and voice messaging tools … and though far ahead of the competition, we were obsolete before we launched.
Why? Because we thought we were building the ultimate system for cold-calling, and cold calling had already become obsolete, we just didn’t know it.
At the end of 2004 my partner Dave Elkington and I had developed nearly two dozen telephony ‘Power Tools’ like automatic dialers that we embedded within online CRM solutions and we were getting crazy productivity increases helping our clients with cold calling. Our sales were picking up and things were going well. So much so, that we decided to pull together a test to see just what we really could do.
We had already built a sales team of ‘closers’ that worked […]
