TechnoSize It

It is the age-old question that has haunted sales VPs since the dawn of time: should I focus on quality or quantity in obtaining leads? Of course, ask ten sales VPs this question and all ten will tell you that they want both. But, given the cost trade off, what is the best course of action when it comes to lead generation?

Leads come in varying degrees of quality, also known as the level of qualification. Highly qualified leads include up to date contact information, access to the decision maker, and an established level of interest or need. Poorly qualified leads may be little more than a company phone number.

Outsourcing lead generation at the highest level is appointment setting. With appointment setting, the lead provider takes on the responsibility not only for obtaining the lead, but also for qualifying the prospect and actually setting a time for your sales force to meet with the prospect to close the sale. Outsourcing your appointment setting relieves your sales staff of a great deal of unproductive prospecting, but is expensive to come by. Only the best lead generation companies can offer value as appointment setters because of the high level of training and extensive manpower required to provide this service.

The textbook distinction between quality and quantity in lead generation is shown in the difference between the Broadcast and Concentration methodologies. The Broadcast methodology casts a wide net across many candidates of varying degrees of interest and qualification. Broadcast focuses on quantity in getting the message out to the widest possible audience and expecting a significant amount of qualified respondents based on statistical sampling.

For example, a credit card company may set up a booth in front of a major sporting event and offer a ‘freebie’, such as a tee-shirt or a blanket. Thousands of leads may pass through and sign up to get their gift but only a small fraction may be truly interested, and even fewer may qualify.

The Concentration methodology, on the other hand, focuses more on the quality of the prospect. Leads generated through Concentration are typically better qualified in terms of interest than Broadcast leads. As the name implies, this methodology focuses on finding (or creating) an environment in which there is a significant concentration of qualified prospects.

An example of Concentration would be a computer software company specializing in telecommunications software setting up a booth at a telecommunications trade show. Since everyone in attendance at the show is inherently involved in the telecommunications industry, the leads are pre-qualified to a large degree. Additional screening at the show can further qualify the prospects based on budget, decision maker status, current provider, and other information that can easily be obtained on the spot.

The quality vs. quantity debate will continue to rage for as long as we continue to prospect sales. There is no right answer, no one size fits all solution to lead generation. Your industry, the size and make up of your internal sales staff, your market share, and a dozen other factors will all contribute to the direction that you take in lead generation. Understanding your options and how they align with your company’s strengths and weaknesses is the key to properly choosing the direction you take in obtaining leads for your sales team.

At TeleArk, we train our managers and sales associates to focus on the industry for a particular client.  Therefore, TeleArk takes a Concentration approach while specifically Broadcasting to our client’s prospects demographics.  As many of our clients can vouch for, we follow a stringent processes in place to ensure every lead generation campaign delivers results.  Often times we chuckle about the level of detail that we go into when setting up a new campaign.  However, we have found our processes to produce the results that our clients look for in a lead generation campaign.

In the end, if our clients cannot generate enough business to afford our services and generate a profit for themselves, our clients would never come back to us.  We pride ourselves in being the start and integral part of the success for our client’s sales teams.

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TeleArk, LLC provides quality and reliable lead generation, appointment setting, sales prospecting, inside sales and business process outsourcing. TeleArk’s services offer the right solutions for small or large businesses. Outbound solutions include lead generation, sales prospecting, appointment setting, invitation to seminars and trade shows including event follow-ups, customer database cleansing and phone surveys. Inbound solutions include order taking and customer service and support. With TeleArk’s real-time reporting tools, every customer can manage their campaign in real-time 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Request a free quote from TeleArk today. TeleArk connects businesses to customers!

I had several companies ask us over the last couple of weeks what inside sales actually is and how it can help their organization.  I often respond by telling them:

Inside sales is where the customer comes to you. They can email, call or fill in a form on your website. Inside sales is responsible for the initial interaction and nurturing of a lead for the rest of the sales team. Many companies choose inside sales as their lead distribution point for the rest of the sales team. Often times once a lead is warmed-up, the lead is handed off to their outside sales force to try close close the lead and turn them into a customer. This process is often further refined and can vary significantly within many organizations.

The opposite of an inside sales person would then be considered the outside sales person. This often involves the salesperson traveling to the potential customer or account in order to make sale. Often, this individual is good at closing the sale and has experience with dealing with resolving objections within the sales process. However, once again, this roles and responsibilities may be mixed a bit between inside and outsides sales persons depending upon the organization.

An inside sales person can be instrumental to enabling the outside sales force to focus on closing leads and not having to constantly warm-up leads. Everyone knows that cold calling, emailing, etc. and following up on inbound sales requests can be a very time consuming process. Generally, it is best to assign this role to be specifically management by one or more individuals in the organization. The inside sales person(s) should be following up with potential leads at regular intervals and provided with the latest technology to make them more efficient. Some of these tools include centralized calendaring to assign leads to the outside sales force, lead reports to identify campaigns that are effective and call/email logs to replay potential lead history for the outside sales team. Providing your inside sales force with the right tools can make all of the difference in a pleasurable sales experience for your potential customers.

What about the right tools for managing the inside sales and outside sales teams and where does technology play a roll in all of this?  It is quite simple.  If you are a sales person inside of a company or even an executive running a business, you would be hard pressed to be successful within today’s environment without the appropriate tools for your inside sales and outside sales team.  This includes the lead lists, appointment calendars and lead tracking systems the keep a company running smoothly enough to follow up with their potential customers.  Most systems that provide these types of features are called CRMs or Customer Relationship Management packages.

There are numerous CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools available on the Internet today ranging from free to commercial.  The right solution for your organization really depends on the reporting tools and capabilities that match your environment.  In the end, one package will not fit every business.  A company that is new to CRM systems should always plan on investing a significant amount of time in tuning and configure the CRM to meet their business’ needs.  In the end, it is often worth hiring someone to consult on CRM package that you choose in order to make the most of the “technology“.

In the end, the structure of the sales team (either inside or outside) really depends on the type of business and the structure of the sales cycle. This can vary from organization to organization and should be re-evaluated each quarter to identify both strengths and weaknesses.

Background on the author

More information about Chris Machut can be found by visit his technology consulting company Netarus at http://www.netarus.com or his lead generation, appointment setting and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company TeleArk at http://www.teleark.com.

My name is Chris Machut and I am a technology guy. Descriptive – no. Plain and simple – yes.

So why am I here?

As a member of HRTC (Hampton Roads Technology Council), I hope to provide some of my thoughts on technology as I have received from others over the years. In particular and for lack of a better description, I’m into technology. I guess you could call me a technologist – by definition, I consider myself curious. I have often encountered blogs that had a unique spin on politics or even a solution to a particular problem that I’ve had. I’ve always found blogging to be an intriguing way to present a different point of view regardless if others agree or disagree. It is my hope that I can share my view to the world as well – and maybe someone just might find it helpful as well.

HRTC is a “Technology” organization. What have I done with technology?

Technology is everywhere – calculators, washers, TVs and even the way things are made or processed is touched by technology. When it comes to technology, I like to focus on the platforms and frameworks apply to or create new technology.

Where did I get my passion for technology?

My first experience with a PC (personal computer) was with the IBM PC Jr in the early 1990s. Ever since, I was hooked on how technology could solve problems and even entertain me. From there, I started off working as a PC repair tech and then moved onto being a network administrator and architect with Windows, Linux, Macs and Novell networks. After graduating from college, I progressed into internet hosting, web design, embedded system hardware and software design, application integration, sensor integration, storage area network design, SOAs (service oriented architectures), virtual infrastructure (i.e. VMware), and even functioned as a trainer and advocate for an XML programming language. All of this I like to do while starting my own business and learning a lot along the way from many others.

If it wasn’t for all of the mentors, managers, colleagues and friends that I’ve worked with over the years, I probably would not have learned nearly as much. And to this day, I still have a lot to learn.

Ok, that’s all good, but what am I doing now?

Well, I’m still a technology business founder. Currently, I am a technology consultant and owner of a telemarketing company that leverages my background in technology to streamline operations.

What is a technology consultant?

Companies and organizations hire me to perform due diligence on their technology. This includes provide these organizations with an objective view point on implementing technology, establishing technology roadmaps or even assisting with the architecture and design of the technology within their organization.

Ok, so that’s enough about me. What does technology mean to me?

One of the first things I did was look up the definition of technology on Wikipedia. Am I the only one that finds it humorous that I’m looking up this definition?

Technology is a broad concept that deals with an animal species’ usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects an animal species’ ability to control and adapt to its environment. Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology

That did not help. This is how I view technology:

Technology is a concept that man leverages to the benefit themselves. Source: Chris Machut

Once again: plain and simple. Technology does not have to have some grand expression just because a lot of technology itself is rather complex. There’s good and bad technology. There is technology that harms and technology that helps. I like to think that most technology applies to the later, but then there is technology that counteracts both those that harm and those that help. In either circumstance, man leverages technology to our own benefit.

What lessons have I learned from technology?

I’ve learned that technology can be a wonderful time saver. Technology can also be a hindrance and consume all of your time – especially if you find that the technology that you use or design does not have a practical application to your problem. But there is one thing that I’ve always taken from being in technology – you always learn something new. Yeah, it is a “rosy” point of view to it, but knowledge is technology to me.

Besides a bunch of non-sense about myself and technology, what do I plan to contribute?

As a technology guy, I look at technology as a solution to every day problems. In my blog, I hope to focus on real-world problems that we all may face today. I hope to share some of my experience with technology that may help address those problems. Very often, the solutions I’ve found on my short time on planet earth have very little or no monetary cost (i.e. licensing). However, I employ any practitioner of technology to approach it with an open mind and with the patience and a willingness to learn something new.

With that said, here’s a quick snapshot of some of the ideas I have that I’ll be focusing on in some of my future blogs:

• Technology Solution: Leverage Technology to Create Sales
  • Problem: Insides sales teams
  • Problem: Nerves with cold calling
  • Problem: Finding good sales personnel
• Technology Solution: Virtualization
  • Problem: Rising energy costs
  • Problem: Maximizing computing resources
  • Problem: Reducing real-estate footprints for computer room or data center
  • Problem: Preventing server sprawl
  • Problem: Improving business continuity (i.e. disaster recovery)
  • Problem: Slow server provisioning
• Technology Solution: XML
  • Problem: Tying together disparate communication systems
  • Problem: Address multiple types of interfaces with software development (HTML, Java, C++, etc.)
• Technology Solution: Cloud Computing
  • Problem: High IT costs
  • Problem: Internal communication
  • Problem: Team collaboration
• Technology Solution: Open Source
  • Problem: High costs of phone systems for small businesses
  • Problem: Microsoft Office suite is too expensive for my business
  • Problem: Team collaboration and keeping track of project tasks
  • Problem: Automating a telemarketing call center

Any of these interest you? See something not mentioned that you would like to learn about? Shoot me a comment below and I’ll see what I can come up.

Shamless plug: Where would someone learn more about Chris?

Take a look at my About page on this blog or visit my technology consulting company website Netarus at http://www.netarus.com or my lead generation, appointment setting and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company TeleArk at http://www.teleark.com. Have a comment you would like to add? Feel free to let me know.