Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia.
Jane Evans is sipping a glass of champagne on the beach and enjoying being a part of the Sales Achievement Club. She qualified comfortably and early but still worked flat out until the year end as her boss had not achieved his target. In Sydney, there have been the usual ‘motivational’ presentations from the company’s senior executives but the social side has been more than enjoyable. She reflects on her success and savours the recognition. Her thoughts turn to the next year and her well-being evaporates. Jane recalls that her pipeline for next year is seriously down as she has been under pressure from her boss to devote all her time and energy on closing the deals to ensure his qualification and not enough time has been spent on nurturing those early prospects. She ponders on why marketing did not sign up with the lead generation service that was pitched to them last year. Unfortunately, her boss decided to use the money to hire another salesperson who has sold nothing and not built a strong pipeline for next year either.
Jane’s cell phone rings. It is the Sales Manager from another company. She says that she has heard good things about Jane and would like her to consider working at her successful and expanding organisation. Jane is interested and flattered but recognises that she will not be offered the best territory and drills further into this. The lady tells her that they use the lead generation service that identifies and nurtures leads that the sales team do not have time to work on. For the territory that she will assign to Jane there are already four prospects who have indicated that they will make a decision in the first quarter, a further six for the second quarter and more who are expected to move in the next year but these will continue in the nurturing process until they are ready to talk to a successful salesman.
“Let’s arrange to meet next week,” says Jane.
New York City, New York.
It’s snowing and Gary Johnson, Jane’s sales manager is wondering if he will make it home. He reflects on why he is not in Sydney and this is because one of his team missed quota. The guy did not have sufficient time to build a pipeline and close the deals and there may not have been sufficient opportunity in the territory assigned. The ‘lead count’ which comes from marketing suggested that the opportunity was there but most of the leads simply evaporated as there was no qualification whatsoever. He perhaps should have done some territory reallocation but this upsets those salespeople ‘losing’ prospects and they must not be distracted from closing the deals. If only there was a better way of marking out territories or at least having some better way of qualifying leads and assigning them to a sales person with the ability and capacity to convert.
The Marketing Director walks in and asks why so many leads that were passed on to the sales team have not been followed up. He has just done his annual loss analysis and found that 30% of the leads that were passed on but not followed up have chosen another vendor. The Sales Manager reflects that if he had picked up on this and passed the leads to his less busy representative and won just 20% of them he would be in Australia and his wife would be speaking to him. However, he doesn’t concede this to the Marketing Director but berates him about the poor quality of the leads and the general uselessness of marketing.
New York, some days later.
Gary is preparing sales plans for the New Year and restructuring territories. It is not an exact science because it is difficult to tell where the concentrations of opportunity lie. The market research data he has is far too general to help and the pipelines are looking bereft after a frantic three months to close all the deals so that he could make the Club…… For the umpteenth time he puts a reminder in his calendar for September ‘DON’T FORGET PROSPECTING AND PIPELINE BUILDING FOR NEXT YEAR!’ Deep down he knows that he will ignore it as he always has in the past but repeats the entry for October to see if that helps.
Jane Evans, his star sales person walks into his office. One look at her face tells Gary that it is not good news. He is correct.
“Gary, there is no easy way to tell you this but I am leaving the company. I will handover all my clients, prospects and work plans to whom you assign and I will clear my desk on Friday. The company I am going to is not competitive so there are no issues there but I have to thank you for the opportunity here including your personal help and counsel.”
Gary can see that Jane’s mind is made up but nevertheless automatically launches into his retention sales pitch and Jane bats back the answers. He offers more money – why did you not value me before I wanted to leave? A better commission plan – ditto. You have status and reputation here – we both know that after two months without a deal it will be what have you done for me lately? Your territory at the new outfit will not be good as you are new – I have already reviewed the allocated territory including the short term prospects and the longer term opportunities, I can see how I will make the Club already. Gary scoffs at this but Jane explains the lead generation service used by her new firm but Gary is only half listening, he can see that this is a lost cause and he has to leave in half an hour to catch a flight to attend a meeting with the CEO to discuss budgets and plans.
He has a few hours to think of a new sales strategy for the year to keep his job. What did Jane say about lead generation? He goes to Google and keys in Lead Generation. There are over 13m results. He calls Jane back in to ask about the service her new company uses. Jane happily gives him details, she owes him that much.
Boston, Massachusetts.
Gary walks into the CEO’s office. The boss is just finishing a phone call and waves Gary to a chair.
“Well, Gary, it seems we have a problem. We missed sales target for the year.” Gary understood his boss well enough to know that when he says “we” he means “you” when there is a problem.
Gary decides that this is not a good moment to tell him that his sales force just got smaller and launches into his plans for the upcoming year – his job retention strategy.
Gary commences by reviewing the lessons learnt from the previous year. Some sales people overloaded, some under-utilised and the difficulties of switching prospects around the team. His win/loss analysis data indicates that they were often slow to get into a sale by which time the competition were controlling the process. Their solution was sufficiently good to win when the sales process was handled well. For next year we should hire an external lead generation service which will allow us to run targeted campaigns segmented across geographies, prospect profile and individuals within the prospects. The cost of this is about the same as a trainee sales person. This better targeted method of finding leads would probably allow a lower spend on general advertising and some of the other generic outbound marketing stuff.
The CEO was interested. They negotiated the targets of business closed and size of pipeline. After the negotiation had completed they agreed that the CEO’s original targets were fine. The CEO signed off the expense and sent Gary on his way with six months to show results.
Gary picked up his phone and dialled Gavin.
