Building a disciplined lead generation process
During the first couple of decades of the 20th century, Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing through the use of the assembly line. He created a disciplined, ordered process for building cars & trucks that was significantly more efficient than hand-building had been previously. On the assembly line parts are added to the automobiles in a sequential & logistically planned sequence. Utilizing this approach, Ford developed significant efficiencies and uniformity of output resulting not only in cost savings, but also predictability and scalability of the vehicles produced.
Similar principles can be of significant benefit when applied to the process of producing leads for the sales team. Too often, the lack of a defined process allows leads to go undeveloped and sales opportunities missed. While the process for building sales leads is not as rigid as building an automobile, the discipline of defining and executing a lead generation process has the potential to produce significant ROI for your organization. Just as companies built products before Ford’s assembly line, you can build a sales pipeline without a defined disciplined lead generation process. The downside is that your organization’s growth rate and return on investment are likely to be significantly lower than if you invest the time & resources to develop your own lead assembly line.
For example, “leads” generated through trade show participation generally require further qualification before passing to the sales force. Too often, after the event, the already too busy sales team is tasked with qualifying and following up on the volume of “leads” produced from the event. This equates to stopping work on another segment of their lead assembly line to cast more parts for the build process. While the sales force may be well intentioned and start to work through the inadequately qualified leads, they lack the time and resolve to make the extra calls. As a result, the leads go stale and do not become active in any portion of the sales pipeline– or worse they are loaded into the sales force automation tool and just sit there. As this process repeats with subsequent shows & events, the sales team learns that too often the leads passed to them from these events are unlikely to produce opportunities and therefore are a waste of their time. A similar case can be made for leads generated online, from direct mail and from webinars.
The answer is to build a process that clearly defines how all generated leads move through the marketing portion of the pipeline before they are passed to the sales team. This begins with a clear consensus definition of a qualified lead. Next the execution steps that move the qualification process along must be clearly defined. Then add/assign the resources that are needed to actually make the process work. Always measure and track the lead generation process to insure effectiveness and efficiency.
The result is an effective lead generation process that produces qualified leads that the sales team can convert.
