Sales

The Value of Your Lead Generation Team

July 26, 2010

Having a lead generation services team at your expansion stage business is beneficial in many ways. The most obvious outcome is increasing revenue if your team is able to generate qualified leads for your sales team to close. However, this is not the only benefit. 

Think about how many leads your lead qualifiers are having conversations with over the course of a week, month, quarter… a lot. If your team has been trained correctly, when a prospect actually picks up the phone (yes, the picking up part can be a bit of a struggle — but with persistence, it happens) they are not selling — they are asking questions. The answers to these questions are key.

Get More Value from Your Lead Generation Team

Your lead qualifiers can actually serve as researchers for your company by gathering data from your prospects such as:

  • What competitors are out there that leads are using/have been approached by?
  • What about your competitors’ product is different/the same in their opinion?
  • What is the persona of the buyer?
  • What are their communication habits/preferences?
  • What industry has the greatest need for your product?
  • What pain points do the decision makers in that industry have?
  • What do the prospects like about your product?
  • What aspect of your product seems irrelevant to them?
  • Does your sales content resonate with the lead?
  • What do they like/dislike about it?

If you look at your conversation rates, it’s clear to see that not every conversation results in an opportunity. However, every conversation can be successful if you look at it from the perspective of gathering data that will help you sell your product better next time around. Data from these conversations can help you find better leads, improve your marketing collateral, and even make improvements to your product to better suit the market to which you are trying to sell.

On a final note, explaining to your lead qualifiers that one of their key functions is gathering data and serving as market researchers will empower them. They are not telemarketers, dialing for dollars — they are helping your business grow by educating others within the business about what the market is saying/asking for… Mark my words, if your lead qualifiers go into a call with less of a pushy sales approach and more of “I’m doing research on your market” approach, leads will be far less resistant to the conversation. OpenView Labs, the operational support arm of the VC, has seen many of the lead qualification teams that we coach find great leads by doing just this!