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“Where’s my leads?” Have you
ever asked this question of your vendor? Or how about
asking a new vendor who is trying to court you as a
reseller; “What is your lead distribution like?” We
all ask our vendors for leads because it’s always
easier to get leads from them instead of generating them
ourselves. Unfortunately, these are not always the kind
of leads we want. In fact, they can actually hurt your
business rather than help it.
Now, I’m not saying that it’s a
bad thing to get leads from your vendor. In fact, a lot
of good business can come from vendor-supplied leads.
What I am saying, however, is that when you look at your
sales cycle, you might want to reconsider where you get
your leads, and when you get them in the sales cycle.
Most vendors will tell you that they won’t commit to
sending out any specific number of leads nor what the
condition of those leads will be. They will also tell
you, and justifiably so, that you as a reseller are
better off generating your own leads. This is all true.
But there is a more important reason for generating your
own leads than simply being in control of your own
destiny or taking the burden, cost and responsibility
away from the vendor.
By the time a prospect goes to a
vendor’s web site or responds to an ad, it’s too
late. Most of the time when a prospect goes to the
vendor for information about their product and
“becomes a lead”, they are already too far down
their decision path to make them a viable lead for you
to work with. They’ve already been through their
internal strategic planning and needs analysis, or their
version of it, as shown in Figure 1. You missed the
opportunity to work with them on forming their concepts
of what needs to be fixed or avoided or added or
changed. They are now looking for the best price or
value for their dollar. At this point, you are chasing a
deal and being reactive. Your goal should be to become
part of the planning stages, not the product evaluation
stages.
The more complex the solution and
the less of a commodity product you are selling, the
more true this is. A company who needs a sophisticated
accounting system, or CRM solution, or enterprise
security system, and knocking on vendors’ doors have
already been through numerous internal meetings about
their needs and requirements. When they believe
they’ve identified their plan of attack, they then go
to the various vendors to compare features and price.
And, that’s when you get the lead from the vendor.
Unfortunately, that’s also too late.
So I ask you – Who is in control
at this point? Certainly not you. You end up responding
to RFPs that are already biased and skewed. You run
around chasing answers to questions in which you have no
idea where they are leading. You start including extra
features at no extra cost and/or discounting your
product without even knowing what value your product has
to the client. All this because they asked you to and
they are in control. You’ve simply positioned yourself
as a reactive order-taker. Jump puppet boy! Jump!
What if you had a clear idea as to
what their exact strategic needs were and how this
solution they are searching for will benefit their
business and what the ROI will be? Wouldn’t that make
you feel a little bit more in control? Wouldn’t that
help you design a solution that is the best one for
their specific needs? Wouldn’t that make you and your
prospect strategic partners instead of Geppetto and
Pinocchio (you being Pinocchio, of course)?
This process of getting leads from
your vendor puts the customer in control instead of you,
which doesn’t help your business. Most important, it
drags out the sales cycle and you end up “losing
slowly.” That’s correct – you lose slowly in these
situations. A quick win is one in which you are in
control from the beginning while working with the client
to define their problems, needs and potential solutions.
When it is time to make a purchase decision, it is much
more straight forward and quick. If the customer is in
control, you get the stalls, delays, and runarounds, and
chase after their every whim. In the end, you will
probably lose the deal since you had no idea what the
prospect really needed and were jerked around every
which way. So you waste a lot of time, only to lose in
the end. Hence, you lose slowly.
As a solution provider, you must be
proactive instead of reactive. Enter the sales cycle in
the beginning of the prospect’s planning process,
during the strategic discussions. Identify their needs
with them and become a trusted partner during the entire
process. Determine your target accounts to go after and
market to them. This will allow you to generate your own
leads in the early stages. As you begin working with
these prospects, make sure you adhere to a structured
sales process so as to follow a set pattern of best
practices that work. Each step being a consistent,
proven process that will lead you from beginning to end,
with you in control. So don’t rely on your vendor to
supply you with leads. Market accordingly, create your
own leads, go after them early, and lead them down a
path that provides the best solutions for their business
and a successful sale for you.
Russ Lombardo has nearly three
decades in the high-tech industry. Since 1994 he worked
for major CRM vendors, such as SalesLogix and GoldMine.
Russ built and managed large sales organizations and
worked with hundreds of companies on their CRM and sales
process requirements. He has extensive experience
working with value-added resellers and channels. Russ is
also the author of the book entitled “CRM for the
Common Man.” Currently, Russ is President of PEAK
Sales Consulting where he focuses on helping companies
develop and implement CRM strategies, sales processes,
and channel development programs. He is a nationally
known speaker, writer, trainer and CRM specialist. |
