Every other lead conversion metric is irrelevant until you get this part right. Brian Carroll, of the B2B Lead Generation Blog nails it:

For this reason, I think cost-per-opportunity measurements are the most effective metrics. The most common metric, cost per lead, is irrelevant unless we can answer other fundamental questions first, “What is our rate of lead acceptance (a.k.a. sales pursuit) into the sales pipeline” and then “What is the cost per opportunity?” Cost-per-opportunity is the one metric that can help you understand how well your sales team accepts and pursues leads. Ultimately, it shows if your leads are actually helping our sales team sell and if marketers are positively contributing to their pipeline.

So, how do you make leads more attractive and valuable to your sales team. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Don’t play games, show them where they came from
• Get or append as much relevant information as possible
• Work hard to deliver clean (contactable) data
• Use a lead management system that shows/reward performance

Help me with these questions:

1. What methods and techniques you use to motivate “sales pursuit?”
2. Do social media interaction, opportunities, and triggers inherently feel like better leads?
3. Do you tell/reveal to your sales force where leads came from (marketing sources)?

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Last night I crashed about 11:00 p.m., never even cracking my MacBook to take my typical final pulse for the evening.

I was exhausted. My work is a bit chaotic (my business is in a full scale client-led strategic shift because of our new Eavesdropper product), every night is spent walking door-to-door (I’m running for School Board in Flat Rock, MI), and I played a late-night volleyball game in my church league.

I even missed tucking in my little angels last night.

My life is busy these days. The last thing I think about is blogging.

Then in swaggers Chris Brogan (@ChrisBrogan), with a lesson.

A lesson in motivation.

You see Chris, who is about 200% busier than I am, took the time to kick me in the pants last night. To give me a lesson in motivation. It was a simple Tweet:

However, that simple tweet did several powerful things a good leader/mentor can regularly do to motivate their team:

• He said, “I know what your capable of”
• “I miss that performance level from you,”
• “I am going to put the responsibility on you to fix it” (note his use of humor), and
• “I am going to raise the bar/expectations” (that Tweet doubled my daily traffic and quadrupled my RSS subscribers)

So, welcome everyone! Go motivate someone today.

And very sincerely, thank you Chris Brogan for all that you do.

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Looking for free lead management software? It is possible. The basic principles of lead management can be cobbled together with free tools. Depending on your sales goals and quotas, these just might do the trick.

Let’s build a free lead management system.

Lead Capture: Email, Contacts, and Spreadsheets

Most sales leads are coming from business cards, website contact forms, or phone calls. These are easily captured in email, contact databases, or spreadsheets. The key is centralizing that process. Consistently use one method or the other. Lost or misplaced leads are one of the top reasons for poor conversion rates or low sales numbers.

Most lead management software automates the lead capture process. Typically the automation will capture lead data directly or allow for simple imports–quickly and efficiently adding leads to a central database.

Lead Distribution: Email or Spreadsheet

Getting leads out to others on your sales team can be as simple as emailing or forwarding a spreadsheet. The challenge becomes syncing these various leads with associated actions or annotating updates and notes.

Popular lead management software often simplifies this process by allowing leads to be transferred or routed within the database. There is little change for loss and all of the past history and notes travel with the lead–important bonus.

Lead Tracking: Folders or Labels

Any good sales person will attribute their long-term success to their database. That means never losing track of a lead. This can be difficult for most. We (sale people) are an easily distracted bunch. Each new shiny object that pops in attracts our full attention, while more productive leads spoil.

Tracking these maturing sales can be as simple as using some of the most basic filing techniques. Remember folders and labels?

I am not necessarily advocating your investment in filing cabinets, manila folders, sticky labels, and a good Sharpie. I am telling you to get organized so you can find and tune into these valuable leads on a regular basis. Whether you are using email or some file system on your computer, get a filing system.

This can be as simple as breaking your sales process into statuses and stages. Move your leads from one folder to the next. Label each lead with a priority or probability of success. This gives you easy retrieval and a simple count of items in these folders and of these labels will easily give you feedback on progress.

Sales Pipeline: Calendar and Alerts

Pipeline management is a critical skill for squeezing more out of your leads and accurately forecasting sales revenue. Your sales quota depends on you mastering this process. Doing it with a free system can be challenging, but it is possible.

Get a good electronic calendar–one that can alert you on your computer and your phone. Good pipeline management means forward motion. That means you need to schedule forward and attend promptly to what is ready to be attended to.

I like Google Calendar, but your organization may use Outlook or other enterprise calendaring system. Whatever it is get your sales process integrated into it. This will give you a realistic sales pipeline. One that accounts for those miscellaneous sales meetings and reporting requirements. It also ensure real sales get equal or more priority than simple (but necessary) administration and reporting.

Task Management: TODO List

With your leads tracked and sales pipeline under control it is time to get down to work. This is the job of your TODO list. Lucky for you there is no shortage of free task lists. The trick is finding one that you will use.

My suggestion is a good legal pad and pen. Something about scribbling out tasks and striking them off the list motivates productivity. However, there are a lot of great electronic solutions as well–Remember The Milk (RTM) and TaskPaper are a few of my favorites.

In my experience the closer you keep this solution to your email the better. This is especially true for free lead management as most of your tasks are invariably generated from and maybe moved forward by email.

Lead Nurturing: Email and Calendar

Finally, you need to manage those leads that aren’t quite ready to convert, but may given time and contact. Again, your email and calendar are the right tools to keep up the appropriate touch points and frequency of contact.

Set-up triggers and integrate them into your regular calls and email correspondence. These prospects will be impressed you remembered them and you will be glad you did. Lead nurturing is probably one of the most effective ways to build a healthy and consistent sales pipeline.

There you go, free lead management. A bit more work and less functionality than proper lead management software, but for a single sales person it can get you by. The calculation you need to do is what will a small investment in integrated sales lead management do for your business?

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I was an early follower of David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity philosophy. It immediately synced with my observations of what makes sales people productive. Allen’s techniques in personal productivity are most effective with busy people. Sales is a numbers game. Processing high volumes of opportunities–efficiently–makes GTD a bulls eye strategy for sales.

When I started applying GTD to my sales teams I was struck by how counter cultural it was. Then I tried to get my sales software to enforce the principles. It was impossible. That is when I knew there was opportunity.

Sales fundamentally is a high-stakes, big numbers game. That sounds like Vegas and most sales people manage their efforts like Vegas–roll the dice and hope for the big hit. However, the people I saw hitting big were methodical processors.

Processing Your Sales Pipeline

In GTD there is the concept of “Getting ‘In’ to Empty.” Our sales pipeline is nothing more than an Inbox and we are going to apply the same principles.

As you process your sales pipeline you should get a sense of motion. Each sales lead should be moving to a different status. Nothing should stay put.

Working through your pipeline should result in leads flowing through these statuses:

1. Attempted: Every lead should get some attempt at contact
2. Contacted: When you make contact a lead transforms
3. Scheduled: Moves leads from routine processing to calendar
4. Application/Proposal: This puts the deal on the table
5. Processing: Can be a bit confusing, but this processing an order
6. Closed: The order is processed, delivered, and you have a client
7. Nurturing: This is where non-responsive prospects go

Allen’s GTD processing has some fundamental rules that we are also going to follow in GTD for Sales.

Top Item First

When I read Getting Things Done for the first time this was one of my first ah ha moments. As I looked around my sales floor I saw everyone “cherry picking” leads. For you non-sales types, that means looking at a list of leads and jumping all around for the “good ones.”

The habit of “cherry picking” is very natural, but easily the most devastating bad practice in sales. Intuition about what a good account looks like is nearly always wrong. What makes it even worse is that bad guesses lead to happy competitors that pick up that easy client you skipped.

All sales leads should be processed from the top down. If you do any prioritization it should be automated and completely obscured from your pipeline processing. Focus is critical. There should be no distractions in processing from the top to the bottom of the pipeline.

One Item at a Time

This is another powerful principle. People tend to mistake being surrounded by lots of stuff and multi-tasking with productivity. My experience is quite the contrary. Giving each item its due focus will move everything in your pipeline forward faster.

This principle is critical to sales, but rarely applied. Each sales lead that comes into your pipeline has an equal probability of closing with you–0 percent. That’s right, if you don’t make a disciplined attempt to contact cold or hot sales leads they will not convert. Therefore, there is no reason to do anything but attempt to contact one lead at a time, in turn, until all are processed.

Concentrating on each lead individually, one at a time, gives it the focus and attention that plays through on the phone or even in a follow-up email. Customers can tell a power dialed or automated email contact. They defensively reject it and you lose any efficiency you might have gained.

Processing one sales lead at a time makes sure nothing is lost, lacks follow-up, or gives that you’re just a number feel. It also gives you momentum. No more wondering what is next–simply get your next lead.

Never Put Anything Back Into “In”

It is ironic how many of these GTD principles most sales software and sales people violate. “Never put anything back into ‘in’” is another classic mistake. How many sales leads do you skip over everyday? Leads you are going to work later. Leads that are of lesser priority. How many ever get a second look?

You see the problem. If you leave leads in the inbox, in their initial state or status, they will never even get an attempt.

Some leads may truly be of a lower priority, but they should still be processed and attempted. Maybe you don’t want to call inquiries under a certain dollar amount. That’s fine, but at least send an email or delegate it to a telemarketer. It could still be a sale, just help the customer do a self-service order or go through a cheaper sales channel.

If you don’t sell that level or specific product at least tell the customer–better yet refer them to someone that does.

GTD has a lot of lessons for making your sales happen in greater volume and frequency. Batch processing your leads is just one facet of applying Getting Things Done to your sale pipeline. Stay tuned for more insights on applying GTD for Sales.

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Too often we are looking for silver bullet systems or recipes for success, while ignoring the basics. In my experience 90% of big sales improvement comes from getting back to the basics. These basics will have an immediate, measurable impact on your sales numbers.

Let’s put it to the test. Here are five fundamentals of sales. If you focus on them they will increase your sales this week.

Breakthrough the Fear of Failure

Jeffrey Gitomer, a sales guru and best-selling author, is famous for saying “fail faster.” This is a critical concept for a sales person to grasp early in their career. Like any professional athlete or best-selling author will testify to, you will swing and miss, shoot and miss, write and miss far more often than not. But, that’s okay because it’s the big ones that make them millions.

Sales has the same odds and the same big rewards. You have to kill the fear of rejection. You will hear “no” far more than “yes.” Embrace it. Know that it only means that you are that much closer to a sale.

Stop Getting Ready to Call, and Call

This is the top failure in sales performance–failure to call. Cold calling has become a pariah. However, the truth is that cold calling is the backbone of sales. Fundamentally you have to make contact and get your message out. That usually means calling a few people, setting up some appointments, and introducing yourself.

Sitting back and waiting for someone to find you and discover how you can help them is really making the buying process hard. And that, of course, is not good for your sales numbers.

Stop Picking Leads, Just Grab One

Here is another real sales quota killer–picking leads. Better known as cherry picking.

The thing about trying to constantly find the “best lead”–it doesn’t work and it wastes time. Ultimately, sales leads are often little more than a name, telephone number, and email. What are you going to make your, “this is a killer sale lead” decision based on?

Much like my advice to pick-up the phone and call, just grabbing a lead is about forward motion. Creating momentum has a far greater impact than getting the right lead.

Start Doing a Little Lead Nurturing

Regardless of how effective your sales pitch and charm might be, most buyers don’t immediately pull the trigger. That’s okay. Assuming you have a good lead nurturing program. In fact, studies show that lead nurturing not only keeps that sales lead active and viable, but may also creates a trust relationship that will actually increase the size of the transaction.

Think about it. You can build a strong feeling of reciprocity with lead nurturing. If you have a good system of touch points and you are giving away valuable content you are building buying pressure on that prospect.

Start Measuring Your Sales Process

One big mantra at a high performance sales organization I used to work at was: “What gets measured gets improved.”

If you’re not breaking down your sales process into measurable elements you might as well be “shooting BBs at the moon”–you’re never going to hit your target. Measuring helps you observe and make timely adjustments, before it’s too late. Do you need to make more calls? Is a certain objection eating you up? Are you losing deals in the proposal phase? If you aren’t measuring you won’t know.

Most importantly, do something with those improvement prompts. Work on increasing your leads and call volume. Tweak that sales script. Improve the value in that proposal.

Hopefully you are seeing a theme. So often, whether it is sales, sports, or any other competitive endeavor improvement is often best achieved by getting back to the basics. Try these back to basics tips and tell me how they go.

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Getting Call Backs

Piercing the voicemail shield or corporate gatekeeper is tough. We know that talking to people always beats email and appointments trump all. But, how do you start the ball rolling to that sales appointment goal?

It all starts with the call back.

Most messages start with, “Hi, this is Bill Rice and I am from Kaleidico…” That is about as far as they get, and the response? Delete–”I don’t care who or what you are.”

The secret to a call back is hooking them with them. Start with a little hip pocket research. Find a like commonality between you and something on their LinkedIn profile, something you found in a press release, or a recent Twitter message.

This is going to have a higher probability of dodging the delete button: “Hi, Mr. Smith I see you just transitioned from EDS to SAIC and I think I might have a solution that would help you break into that new Homeland Security initiative.”

Keys to Getting Call Backs

• Know something about the prospect
• Start with them, then introduce yourself
• Make it easy to connect

Audience Building, Not Networking

I am hear to tell you networking is a waste of time. However, before you start trashing your LinkedIn, Twitter, and email contact manager let me clarify.

Collecting business cards and online friends is fruitless if you are expecting them to throw referrals and introductions at you. Like the call back, the classic approach to networking has been to gather people and start asking for favors.

Try this instead–build an audience. This sales technique is one in which you share value and relationships in such a way that people are “watching” you. They want to know what you will share next, listening for what you think is important, and hoping they might be the next one to get your light.

When you build networks audiences in this way your request for an introduction feels almost like you are doing them a favor.

Keys to Building Audiences

• Add value and content
• Engage and participate
• Lend a helping hand

Targeting Opportunities, Not Numbers

Often we get focused on the numbers game in sales we for how to target. Don’t get me wrong, surfing the web waiting for providence doesn’t land deals. However, a smart strategy of eavesdropping and monitoring for opportunities can strengthen your sales pipeline.

The key to making this sales technique work is setting up efficient listening posts. Social media and the dramatic shift to Web communities has delivered remarkable sales opportunity. Everyone is talking about their projects, needs, and pain point. You simply need to listen.

Smart Tools for Targeting Sales Opportunity

• Google Alerts
• RSS Readers
• Twitter
• FriendFeed

Writing Great Emails

Email is still one of the most important sales tools, but how do you write a good one?

So many of our emails are basic communication–quick replies and simple updates–conversation stoppers. This causes problems when we switch gears, into sales mode. We are hoping to start conversations. This is a critical sales technique

Start with the subject line. This may be all they read. Make it count. I like to try to cram credibility and interest in that short line. For example:

• “Bill Rice suggested I call about content management”
• “Did you see the new EHR legislation? Will it impact you?”
• “Quick question about HIPAA compliance–45% fall short”

Hopefully, you can tease an opening with specific and timely information in the subject line. It’s open. Immediately set the hook. I think the best way to do that is with a specific event or referral that makes your cold email seem, “Well timed.” Don’t waste the opening with an introduction. Suck them in with why you emailed them and how you are going to help them.

If you get them all the way through the email don’t forget to close with good (multiple) contact points for follow-up. Then close with one last pause and value statement. I still like to use a postscript for that job

Keys to a Great Email

• Credible, interest generating subject line
• Hook them with specifics
• Don’t forget to close with contact information
• P.S. them with one last nugget of value

What are your Better Sales Techniques?

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Here is a short guide to closing the big deal–a job!

1. Ideas are More Important than Resumes (hat tip: WWD). The resume seems to be going the way of the dinosaur. It is still showing up as a standard format in online social networking sites, like LinkedIn. However, it seems to be less and less useful in conveying relevant experience and current projects.

Notice I used the term projects versus job. This is the trend I see evolving. More and more highly qualified and talented people are managing their careers on a project basis, not one serial corporate employer at a time. The economy and businesses are way to fluid to support this more industrial paradigm of work.

2. Employers Want to See Portfolios (hat tip: WWD). The fluidity of employment and the prevalence of online publishing is prompting employers to ask for portfolios. They want to see the work and the results, not your resume spin on you accomplishments.

Learning to organize and package this portfolio is critical. Do you have a nicely organized personal brand, work samples, and links to relevant social profiles? Maybe you should this is one of the first things a prospective employer will hunt for–Google must be able to efficiently find your pitch.

3. It’s a Freelance Economy. I have to say this is my pick for the mega-trend emerging from the latest global recession–everyone is a freelancer. To one degree or another the instability of employment and the sharp rise in unemployment has shaken the confidence of employees. The natural result has been for people to diversify.

Even those employees still working for corporate America are likely to be seen building the personal brand on social networks or working on a side project or two in the evenings.

4. You’d Better have a Personal Brand. If you are relying on your resume, printed on heavy stock with a nice cover letter to make you competitive for a job in this market then you are sadly mistaken. Given the choice between a resume (your word) and a candidate where I can go online vet their work and their network–the resume-only candidate is going to lose.

Start branding your expertise and the social network to validate it, before you need a job. Ideally when that employer goes out into the market to ask, “Who is the best enterprise software salesperson, designer, copywriter?” Everyone links to you.

5. Don’t Wait to Get Recruited. Finally, waiting around for the recruiter to find you for that dream job is foolish. First, it is a great big world of unemployed, under-employed, and unhappily employed people. Second, most recruiters are trying to fill jobs people are not as interested in taking (i.e., poor compensation, uninteresting work, nondescript employers, clogs in the wheel).

The best jobs/projects are the ones you go after or even better to create in an exciting company. If you have a great idea or see an exciting opportunity–pitch it to good companies. Think entrepreneurial and find someone that will pay you to execute your plan or create you dream position.

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This morning’s newsletter brings another gem–Coasting towards apathy.

You might be saying to yourself, “Bill, no one in this market is coasting. We are all trying to survive!” I am going to contend that they are both one-and-the-same, just positioned at different points in the business cycle.

Coasting in Good and Bad Times

Coasting can creep in at any time, good or bad. In good times it is the apathy of money, in bad it is the loss of hope. Regardless it leads to bad endings–often unexpected ones.

The secret to avoiding coasting is to practice intensity.

It is hard to maintain, but you will see world class athletes using that edge all the time. Michael Phelps won the 100-meter butterfly because Cavic was gliding and he was in a final stroke. This was Phelps signature event, but he was swimming like someone could beat him. It was a good thing, because someone almost did.

Chris Gardner was a multiple-time failure, but he never coasted to what would seem a natural oblivion. He opened his eyes and looked for successful models–then he got intense.

Jeffrey Gitomer holds a place in my mind for how to build intensity in bad times–“Fail Faster!”

Never Leave the Field Wondering…

What could I have done?

As a distance runner in my school years this was a gut wrenching question I was often left with. You see, a distance runner has a dilemma–you have several miles and only so much fuel in the tank. Come out too fast, and you lose. Come out too cautious, and you lose.

You have to figure out that balance, but my trick was to figure it out in the middle. Your competition is your benchmark. You can see them and you know where you want to be. The tough part is when you are in the lead, setting the pace. In this position, coasting kills. You are letting your competition rest for the finishing kick, while you are emptying your tank. So, if you are going to take the lead make sure you are emptying the other people’s tanks faster than your own.

And for heaven sakes, never win coasting and be left with the–”What could I have done?”–question:

Even in winning, people can coast. For example, I remember being at last summer’s Olympic Games in China at the men’s 100-yard dash final. Usain Bolt from Jamaica blew away the field and won in a world-record time. However, I couldn’t help but think how fast he actually could have run, had he not coasted at the end and looked around at his competitors. His record will be broken one day, but we’ll never know how fast he could have run that race.

I agree with Mr. Mackay this was a difficult win to get excited about. There was truly something more spectacular left in the tank.

Intensity Always Wins

In the end, intensity always wins. Whether you end the race, your project, or your business in the lead you will know you finished without coasting.

And more often than not, that will continue to move you towards the front of the pack, until you are finishing first.

You can listen to hundreds of sales pitches or review as much marketing copy and you will often be hard pressed to find the “ask.” You will hear and see lots of features, maybe a little bit of benefits, but rarely will you find a “will you buy one?”

I think the formula for successfully asking for the sale is similar to the classic good communication rule of thumb:

• Tell them what you’re going to tell them
• Tell them
• Tell them what you told them

Tell ‘em What You’re Going to Tell Them

Right out of the gate make sure your prospect understands why you are there. Nothing is worse for the customer than trying to guess, “What’s the catch?” Ever sit through the old Amway pitch? Excruciating!

Be clear on what you are selling and what you are going to be asking them to buy–then move into why they are going to want to make that purchase decision.

Tell ‘em

As you move through your benefits and what it is in it for them don’t forget to remind them what’s in it for you. Nothing makes a prospect more skittish about an offer than not understanding how you benefit.

Have you ever heard a sales pitch where you aren’t quite sure how the pitchman gets paid? It impacts trust. You feel like you may be entering into a scam.

Be right upfront–”When you buy one I get earn a commission.” The masters of this are car salesmen. How many times have you heard, “I am willing to give you a great deal on this one, because it puts me over my quota for the month.” It is cheesy, but he is clear on the fact that you are getting a great deal, because it benefits him.

It is a trust move. It makes the pitch more believable.

Tell ‘em What You Told ‘em

Don’t end the conversation without asking for the sale one last time. Whether you are looking for the real pain point, the real decision maker, or the real timeline–make sure you remind them that you want them to buy.

Try asking more and seeing if you sell more. How do you structure your “ask?”

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