Leads – Do you need more?

Unless you just started in sales, and I mean like you started in sales this morning, you should know exactly what I mean when I say the following:

“Put, that coffee, down.”

(Devotees already know the next line – Coffee’s is for closers only.)

David Mamet’s masterpiece, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a salesman story classic. Salesmen of all stripes, in every industry, parrot the lines. Of course, the line for which the film gets its namesake, for which every salesman who watches the film remembers, is this one, “These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you, they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They're for closers.”

Do the leads matter? Every company I talk to wants more leads. They'd sell more if they just had more leads, or so the mantra goes.

Well, boys and girls, I’m here from downtown, and I’m here from Mitch and Murray.

And I’m here on a mission of mercy.

Because today, we’re going to talk about the leads.

Yes, the leads matter, and the flow of leads matters, but what matters more is how salesmen engage "the leads" and the effort put forward by the salesman in the "long race" in building the network.

First, where the heck do leads come from? Have you ever thought about that?

A lead is nothing more than someone a salesman can talk to about the company's offerings. Could be anyone? A random person off the street is a lead.

It's not a very good lead (ah, yes, we’ll get to that), but it's a lead, nevertheless.

Leads come from the company's advertising and marketing efforts. (Surprised?)

So, really, increasing lead flow is a simple matter.

The obvious answer is to increase your marketing activities. (This is where CEOs and Presidents shudder and CMOs and Marketing Directors go "duh".)

I know that’s a problematic statement for many to accept, but it’s simple. There’s not a single big business in America that doesn’t spend a tremendous amount of money on advertising, marketing, and related activities.

All businesses engage in two complementary cycles: the business cycle, which ends in the production of leads, and the sales cycle, which ends in the production of revenue. The business cycle starts with scratch and produces a lead, while the sales cycle starts with a lead and produces a revenue stream.

Hopefully, you can visualize that these two cycles fit like gears together. The business cycle feeds the sales cycle.

If you don’t have a business cycle, then your “sales team” (the sales cycle) is just waiting for leads.

It’s like having a power plant trying to generate power as a field of lightning rods waiting for a thunderstorm. Not precisely a predictable way to generate power.

Yet, this is how most companies in America operate. It’s also why most companies in America remain small.

So, if you really want to increase lead volume, it’s really just a function of your marketing activities, both in terms of total dollars and intensity. Increasing the value of both will increase lead flow.

Now, additionally, hiring (or building) a talented marketing team that understands your ideal customer is also a boon. Marketing and advertising are essentially your "bait." Thus the fish you "catch," with your bait are the leads. If you want different fish, you have to change your bait. So if the leads the business receives aren't great (in other words, they're not all that well qualified) then the problem isn't your sales team, it's your bait (marketing.) So, your targeting is wrong, or your message is wrong, or both are wrong. All of that needs to be addressed - either through changing strategy, creative, the team, or all three.

(Hint: Most companies address this problem by hiring someone - if you'd like to talk to someone who is, like, well, super skilled in this area - I happen to be one - happy to have that conversation.)

The sad irony is that, believe it or not, increasing lead volume doesn't solve most businesses' revenue problems.

Second, most businesses need not an increase in leads, but an increase in engaged leads. Engagement boils down to the salesman, not the marketing activity.

This is because most salespeople improve their conversion skills at a different rate than the lead increase.

So think about it in terms of batting average.

If a batter gets ten pitches and hits three, then the batter hits .300; that's a decent batting average. Let's increase the number of pitches and see what happens. So we then give that same batter 50 pitches, a 5X increase (which wouldn't be unheard of for an agency like ours to do), but under most circumstances, that batter probably would only hit up to 15 balls. That's still a .300 average, and that's under the best circumstances. Under the stress of 5X more lead flow, most salespeople will bat like .250.

So, most businesses need to increase the engaged lead flow, not the overall one. That will deliver the result the business hopes will happen, an increase in both the rate of conversion and the rate leads (or at the minimum a steady rate of conversion and an increasing lead flow.)

In most of the businesses that we encounter at B2B Think and in our other agency (The Aviation Agency), a small number of high-value companies would make a big difference in the value of our clients' businesses. So, they don’t need hundreds and hundreds of new clients; they need 10 or 20 new companies in their portfolio. With that being the case, most companies need to increase their engaged lead flow by maybe 10%.

That’s not a big swing of the bat, but it requires some dedication and commitment because getting an engaged lead is considerably harder than just increasing all the flow through the pipe. Salesmen have to hustle for it.

Hustle is hard.

Engaged leads are developed through branding activities and community development. They are also developed by pushing out real value to your audience at both the macro and micro levels. All of these activities are difficult for companies because they are “farming” activities rather than hunting activities. They don’t have immediate ROI metrics so that many companies won’t do them.

As a salesperson, you can still do things that provide this engagement. When you meet with prospects, you need to figure out early on what stage they are in the process and whether they’re engaged. If they’re not, you shouldn’t just ignore them, which is what most companies will do. You should still engage the prospect and provide them some value. I’m not saying go crazy, but building a rapport with that prospect will pay off.

Here's an example of what I mean. I have no doubt there are a couple of realtors in your area who are the “go-to” people who seem to get the majority of listings and sell most houses. There are these handful of people, typically not more than ten, and usually not more than five. In my town, there are three people. These three realtors have spent the better part of three decades networking, building a Rolodex of people, attending high school games, meeting parents, etc.

Consequently, these realtors have a network of almost everyone in the town I live in (Minnetonka.) They may approach you to sell your house even before you think about selling your house (thereby facilitating a sale without having to list). When you want to buy, they know housing that will come on the market before being listed.

Essentially, these people have become market makers. They have a tremendous advantage over every other realtor in town. Yes, everyone has access to the MLS system, to people, and to listings. Everyone is supposed to have the same playing field. These three realtors, however, wind up disproportionately on something like 60% of the listings because they’re the ones with the network.

They engaged the market.

That also works in B2B more than you might think. In our field, I talk with lots of business leaders. We’ve landed a business where I talked with the CEO years prior; he moved from one company to another, and then he called us two company switches later because we were the right connection.

You never know, so you'll need to engage.? That’s the purpose of the business cycle. You’re always developing prospects to various levels of engagement. Some will be ready for the sales cycle – that’s awesome. Some may never get to that level, and as sad as you may feel about that, that’s how the cookie crumbles.

Finally, I’m stunned by how few companies effectively use CRM. I’m not saying you need Salesforce, but you need something.

Ultimately, this game is about information. You must know where your leads are, what they’re doing, their status, etc.

What’s worse, companies that pay tens of thousands of dollars for something like Salesforce and then don’t use it.

You want to use a notepad to make notes. Great. Want to use Salesforce, great.

But you need something to keep track of your list, and you need to touch everyone as often as possible.

There are tons of software packages, but here is a word of caution:

The software is excellent, but it can also go bonkers. Before you know it, the software runs crazy, and your attempt to reach out to people turns into a disaster. So make sure you keep a close eye on it. If it goes bonkers (which has happened to me), own up to it and apologize. I’ve had my software go bonkers, and I’ve just confessed to people. I tell them it’s important to me to keep in touch. Yes, I use software, but I look at the responses and what the software is doing. I'm sorry it got away from me, and I want to genuinely connect, which is why I knew the software went berserk. Usually, it’s met with a genuine engagement, and it turns out ok.

So don’t let AI or software go bonkers. That can alienate them worse than if you don’t talk to them.

In the end, for most of you who want more lead flow, you need to increase your marketing. Since many of you don’t want to do that, the alternative is to increase your outreach as a salesperson and interact with more people daily.

Keep better notes, don’t go overboard with software, and in the long run, try and provide more value until the lead demonstrates he’s ready to buy.

One aspect of Glengarry Glenn Ross that I identify with is when Alec Baldwin reminds the sales team that when a guy walks onto the lot, he doesn’t do it to get out of the rain. When the lead does come back to you, it’s likely because there is an unmet need that the lead is trying to solve, at least subconsciously. With your probing and help, there’s probably a business opportunity there.

Prospects don't approach you for no reason. There probably is an unmet need somewhere. Find it.

Go get’em, Shelly.

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