Don't Blame the Economy: Don't Be A Victim!
Unfortunately, individuals and companies feel that with all of the negatives this is not the time to spend money on marketing and sales. Actually, business analysts will tell you that at times like this it is imperative to invest in aggressive marketing, and fine-tune the sales process to find out what programs are working and which ones aren’t. This is when you must have a system in place to make sure you get the best bang for your buck.
LEADTRACK has been in the sales lead management business for 30 years and it is shocking that from 1979 to 2009 several figures remain constants in business annals…
- More than 50% of qualified leads are never worked by sales
- Less than 50% of a sales persons time is spent selling
- 80% of trade show leads are never followed up
You need tools that will ensure:
- Your valuable sales leads do not fall through the cracks
- Inquiries are quickly routed to the correct sales person for quick action
- Marketing investments are analyzed to optimize budgets
- The entire organization is linked to the sales pipeline
This is not the time to sit back and wait for things to improve. Take control, implement a state of the art sales lead management solution to make sure your precious sales leads are not falling through the cracks. Don’t let your company or your sales people become casualties of this temporary economic slow down.
You can implement a solution, either on-demand or on your premise in a matter of days and begin realizing the many benefits of improved sales lead and marketing management.
You can’t blame the economy if:
- Your reps spend the majority of their time in non-sales activities
- More than half of your costly qualified leads are never worked by sales
- 80% of your trade show leads are never followed up
Take action, now. Don't be a victim.
As a marketing profession , who has had the pleasure of going through more then one or two recessionary time periods, I can tell you, your article is 100% on point.
We have seen both our clients and our own growth in double digit territory during turbulent times.
Thank you,
Drake Morton
www.drakemorton.com
www.verbaleyes.com
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Thanks Drake. We too are having excellent growth only because we aren't looking for excuses. We are looking for opportunities.
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Excellent post. As marketing and sales professionals we should not be allowed to blame the economy for lack of success until every strategy and tactic for success is exhausted. This is a great time to fine-tune your processes to not only survive the recession but come out even stronger.
chris.ryan@earthlink.net
Twitter: @CRyanFusionMkt
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You nailed it! You weren't looking for excuses, you were actually working and looking for business.
Thank you,
Drake Morton
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Jim,
Excellent post. So often we try to rationalize our under-performance and the recession provides a perfect excuse. We create our own victimhood by doing those things that will make us victims.
As you point out, if we're not really doing those things that will make our company successful, nothing else, including the recession, matters.
There are companies thriving in today's economy. Not by luck but because they haven't given into the temptation to cut marketing and sales investment, they don't allow leads to go to waste, they make sure their salespeople are free to do those things that generate sales rather than spending time on busy work.
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Thanks Paul - your comments are right on too. I run into companies every day that have reduced marketing personnel, trade shows and advertising with no concern for the long range impact.
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Jim, Great post. Fortunately, we've seen our lead-centric client companies increase their lead generation activities over the last few months. They have even worked to re-qualify old leads, re-actitiving leads. This is often cheaper than spending money to find new leads.
Judy Baldwin
Director of Marketing Communications
SmartLead by AdTrack
http://www.smartlead.com
http://www.smartlead.com/blog/
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Nice posting Jim. Marketers create wealth as surely as any salesperson, but if they can’t prove it, it’s anyone’s guess if it really happened. Proving it means tracking and reporting on the results of the lead generation programs they spend money upon. A marketer who can prove the ROI for their budget by tracking the inquiries and leads is way ahead of the curve and will by definition never be a victim. There is no guarantee they will survive “down-sizing,” but I can bet they will know they did everything in their power to not only create wealth, but prove it.
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Thanks Jim. This is exactly the point those of us in the sales lead management space keep putting forth. If programs aren't worth measuring then they aren't worth doing.Not having the tools to track ROI sets one up to be a victim when downsizing rolls through the company.
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"Ain't it awful?" "Yes, do you think so too?" While the slow down in our economy has been harmful to many businesses, there are many more who are doing quite well. We have clients who are growing in spite of the talk of malaise.
Salespeople fall into the trap of thinking "it's awful" out there. And, further, they talk to each other and confirm "it's worse than awful." Thinking like that can only result in poor performance. I worked for a manager who used to say "when the going gets tough, the tough get going." The important idea is we could use our time to moan and complain or we could get out there and find clients who had issues we could help them with.
Most of our current clients, for instance, know or are learning they have much inefficiency they can squeeze out of their sales process. And removing these infficiencies does not involve the expenditure of large amounts of money. Rather, it is a matter of finding the areas of largest immediate return and attacking them right now.
Two popular areas of improvement are in qualification and discovery. Salespeople tend to have happy feet and think everything is an A prospect. Tightening down qualification requirements is generally inexpensive. The same is true for discovery. Improving the outcomes of first prospect meetings is quite easy and can have very high ROI.
Thanks Phil,
Misery does love company so when we start to grumble the poor attitude spreads fast. I agrre that sales people have happy feet and look at everything as an A prospect but unfortunately when things aren't going so well they tend to think every lead is a loser. Pre Qualification and then an effective first contact will make a big difference.
Thank you.
Jim
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Jim,
Thanks for reminding everyone that no matter what our job description is, we are all tasked to do one thing and one thing only, drive revenue rapidly.
At the end of the day, no matter what the economic outlook, we have a job to do, drive revenue rapidly. So as marketing and sales professionals we need to focus on getting meetings. How do you do that without the tools or processes in place? In my opinion you don't. You are exactly right about the fact there are cost effective tools out there in the market that will help you automate your processes making you more efficient and provide crm integration capabilities making you more effective. Without this investment your chances of success are slim to none (IMHO) Arguably this is the best time to invest in technology not only for the future but next quarter. This investment will also ensure a lion share of market when the economy strengthens. Without it you might not survive.
For the first time in history a sales person, or marketer for that matter, can track a person's digital body language and discern tire kickers from real sales opportunities. And we can automate the once mundane and often sporadic task of lead nurturing. I once read a report (I believe by Sirius Decision or BtoB Magazine) that stated out of all the leads companies generate only 24% will actually buy a solution within the first 12 months, then 23% will buy a solution between months 13 and 24 and over 40% make a decision 25 months or longer either from the target company or competitor. Hence the need for automated lead nurturing and lead scoring. Companies need to get busy now if there is to be a tomorrow..
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Hi Shawn,
You made some very powerful statements that I will weave into my own sales pitch. You are spot on about the imperative to use tools to organize, follow up and nurture leads. Depending on the type of product you're selling, the average sales rep may make 10, 20 or even 30 calls a day. How can you possibley keep track of what you said or did or when to follow up without an automated process?
Thank you!
Jim
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I am reading and commenting on this article in the very early hours of the first day of the coming week. As I do so, I realize that that it is my personal sales performance that is depressed, not the economy. This article brutally reminds us that a bad economy is often the least of our problems. As often as not, our greatest problem is our failure to take advantage of the opportunities before us. Whether we are lazy or merely disorganized, the fact is that we’re just not working as hard or as effectively as we need to. The evidence permits no other conclusion. How in the world can a sales organization blame the bad economy when it doesn’t follow up on the leads it already has? How would a salesman know that customers aren’t buying when he’s only spending half his time selling? Think about that.
Casually blaming poor sales on a poor economy is not just negative thinking, it is sloppy thinking. What would we think if the finance and operations departments tried to blame a bad economy for poor financial results if half the work force were idle? What would we think if the engineers tried to blame the economy for a 50% reduction in unit production when their workers were standing around half the time? Answer: We wouldn’t let them get away with it for a second. And yet we do it with sales “production” all the time. Poor economic conditions may very well be a factor in our diminished sales performance. But it is rarely the only factor or even a major factor in the equation. The real problem is that we’re not working hard enough, long enough or smart enough.
I know this is a tough message, but it’s also a very optimistic one. If we were already working as hard as we could, we might have reason to be pessimistic. But the article offers statistical proof that we aren’t. Hence, it’s crystal clear that if we get busy and really bear down, we can sell our way out of our problems. Guaranteed.
Bottom line: Get busy. Pick up that phone, make a call and get in front of a customer. And don’t forget to invest in a system that will make sure that you don’t waste the most precious commodity in the world, the single thing that offers a salesman tangible proof of God’s existence: a LEAD!
God bless and good selling!
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Thanks Mike,
What a thoughtful and well written post. Thanks for taking the time from your busy schedule (and personal time) to share your thoughts. I hope sales and marketing people across the country read your post and then lobby for tools to make them more effective. Give me the right tools and I'll work harder and smarter.
Thank you.
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Very useful post!! Business professionals should not blame the market economy for the failure of the business strategies. All strategies does not always guarantee their success.
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