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Sales lead DNA: What makes a sales lead a lead?
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| Posted By :
2008-08-19 01:11:09 |
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Most sales people think leads come in three different flavors: Hot, warm and cold.
Not so…sales leads come in many many flavors, shapes and sizes…each one requires a unique sales follow up protocol that depends on what I call the “sales lead’s DNA”. What is sales lead DNA? Just like human DNA which is the instruction book used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms, sales lead DNA can be compared to a set of blueprints upon which your sales lead was generated.Sales lead DNA may contain your target sic codes, the level of contact of your decision maker, the unique set of pain points captured in your initial conversation, competitiveness of your marketplace, geography, company size and the list goes on. Understand your sales lead's DNA makeup and you can predict they will behave in different situations with surprising accuracy.
Why understanding sales lead DNA so important?
1) It helps you better understand how to approach your decision maker. The more you know about the specifics of your lead's business, market and industry, the more you understand the factors that drive your decision maker's decisions. And the more you understand about the things that drive his decisions, the more effective you will be in making sure you are on the upside of one of those decisions. Come to him saying "here I am, here's what I can do," and you'll have as good a shot as the next guy. But come to him saying "here you are, and here's where we can go together...and here's how and why it's a perfect fit for your business". You will be two steps ahead all because you took the time to figure out the lead's DNA.
2) Sales lead DNA allows you to take a reality check when things do not go your way as you can point back to inherent characteristics of a lead that make it more or less challenging. When you have a lead that seems perfect, and then ends up slipping off the line inexplicably, having a detailed DNA report of that lead can help you try to identify where things might have gone awry. Maybe companies who are going through a restructuring aren't the best candidates for your product or service. Maybe the budget wasn't there after all? Go through your factors and see if you can discover what it was that caused the lead to not pan out.
3) Understanding your sales lead DNA allows you conduct lead development process improvements by tweaking your chemistry. Periodically review the factors in your sales DNA database (or however you are tracking them). See if you can find correlations between certain factors and your successes or failures. If there is a factor that is consistently converting, then you need to clue your lead generation team into it. If there is a certain factor that keeps rearing its head in your failures, examine your lead management and sales procedures to see if you can figure out why (and what you can do about it).
4) Lead generation diagnostics can be done scientifically. Is it the sales lead script, list or lead generator?
By putting your DNA histories through a thorough analysis, you can see results by factor, industry, and sales rep. If you're tracking your process as well as the leads' DNA blueprints, then you can see what sort of factors are causing issues with which reps and where i |
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