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Prospect Development: The Giant Donut Hole in Sales & Marketing

Written by: Neil Mahoney

Article Overview: Ineffective Inquiry Qualification & Development * The most-ignored activity in Sales & Marketing * The most-effective way to maximize your MarComm investment * The surest way to increase sales & profits

Prospect Development: The Giant Donut Hole in Sales & Marketing

To paraphrase Mark Twain, inquiries from Ads, Publicity & Trade Shows are like the weather: Everybody talks about them but nobody does anything about it.

Historically it's been the job of MarComm to generate the inquiries, then pass them on to the Sales Force for follow up.

Historically the reality has been that:

A. MarComm promptly passes on the inquiries from ads and PR.

B. After special events like major Trade Shows MarComm was swamped and the inquiries didn't get sent to Sales for 2 or 3 months.

Whatever the case, when Sales got the inquiries they quickly thumbed through them and:

A. Put people and companies they recognized in the follow-up file

B. Put people and companies they didn't recognize in the round file

Funny isn't it?? Ads, PR and Trade Shows are supposed to generate inquiries from people and companies that weren't previously identified as prospects. Yet that's exactly who Sales is tossing away. (I saw this happen more than once.)

But Sales isn't the real culprit in all this. Sales already has so much non-selling work to do they only get to spend about 30% of their time in front of the customers and prospects.

The culprit is the system that's not in place, but should be -- and hundreds of Business Execs agree. 722 US Business Execs responded to a survey thusly:

1. Almost sixty percent said their companies convert less than ten percent of their leads to sales.

2. Another sixty percent said company revenues could be increased by 15% or more with proper follow up.

3. 53% said their company had no formal process for qualifying and validating new-business opportunities.

4. Only half the execs thought Sales & MarComm worked well together on projects that require teamwork.

5. A paltry 7% said the two groups (Sales & MarComm) teamed effectively on new-business development.

If senior management really believes this and wants to reap of its substantial investment in:

A. Advertising, Publicity & Trade Shows

B. Newsletters & Direct Mailings

C. Websites and other Promotional efforts

It needs to institute an Inquiry Qualification and Development system separate from Sales & MarComm. Unfortunately, there's no one set system for every business situation. If you want to reap the fruits of your substantial Business Development investment, consult an expert.

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Article Tags: amp, business execs, company revenues, culprit, inquiries, job, marcomm, mark twain, nbsp, new business development, new business opportunities, paraphrase, prospects, publicity, teamwork, trade shows, weather



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