Sales

Lead Qualification Strategy: Required Reading for Lead Qual Success

OpenView

August 8, 2012

When OpenView hosted a workshop on lead qualification management, we had a wonderful opportunity to ask a panel of industry experts to provide their insights into the lead qualification process and share their best practices for successful lead qualification management. The resulting four-part roundtable series has shed light on the key things managers need to have in place before launching a lead qual team, the secrets to negotiating the biggest challenges of managing a lead qual team, and the secrets to keeping lead qualifiers focused and motivated.

This week we conclude the roundtable with a list of further required reading for lead qualification success:

What required reading would you suggest for companies looking to establish or improve their lead qualification strategy?

Matt Bertuzzi, B2B Marketing Consultant at The Bridge Group

 

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. It was written for big, long, and hairy sales processes, but I think some of the more important findings deliver the most value at the front-end of the sales process.

Specifically I’m thinking about “the reframe” – the idea that we as sellers need to introduce new perspective on how buyers are underestimating an issue, not recognizing an opportunity, or failing to anticipate a problem.

John Barrows, Co-owner and Managing Partner of Kensei Partners

 

Jill Konrath’s books, SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers and Selling to Big Companies are great resources for any sales manager.

Aaron Ross, creator of salesforce.com’s outbound prospecting team and co-author of Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com

 

Last year we published our book, Predictable Revenue, and it goes into quite a bit of detail around how we built Salesforce.com’s $100M outbound leadqual team and the “Cold Calling 2.0” process we created there.

The book also offers detailed steps of how to build self-managing sales teams, our favorite prospecting tips & questions, and how to get your sales reps to help you redesign comp plans.

Readers can get the first several chapters of the book for free at David Skok’s great interview, “Why Salespeople Shouldn’t Prospect.”

Mike Volpe, CMO Inbound Marketing at HubSpot

 

I would say The B2B Social Media Book by Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen, which is all about driving and managing leads with blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, etc. Social is becoming more and more critical for the sales and marketing process, including lead qualification.

Thanks for joining us for this lead qualification roundtable series. You can access the previous posts in the series below:

Photo by: Pietro Bellini