The #2 Reason Your Sales People Tell You: “The Leads Are Weak”

Is there a more famous sales line than that classic from Glengarry Glen Ross?

Alec Baldwin swaggers onto the sales floor for a brutal beration of the sales staff. They want the new leads, the Glengarry leads. He tells them that if they can’t close with the old leads, they don’t deserve the new ones. It’s a vibe and a mindset that came straight from the ‘80s financial attitude, which spilled over into the ‘90s, and continues to spill over today.
We speak to a lot of salespeople at a lot of companies, and we come up against this one regularly.

Sometimes, it’s an excuse. But sometimes — and this is important — the leads are actually weak.

Something we see time and time again, is that companies are leaving the job of lead generation to their salespeople. They assume that if someone can sell, they can gather leads as well. But this is inaccurate almost all situations.

Sales and marketing are two totally different (albeit related) jobs.

In other cases, salespeople are cold calling, or given old and burnt out leads.

In all of the above situations, your sales team are not working to their optimal level. A salesperson should be spending the vast majority of their time on the phone, talking to people. They shouldn’t be spending their time researching, Googling, making spreadsheets, reading websites, tracking down contact names, dialling disconnected numbers, and all amount of other work that isn’t sales.

We know from our huge number of datapoints in our tracked calls, that the main thing that corresponds to sales, is how many conversations a salesperson has per day. The more conversations, the more sales. And by extension, the more time spent on gathering leads, the fewer conversations, and the fewer sales.

Marketing and lead generation shouldn’t fall to your sales team.

You should have someone who is dedicated to lead generation, who is always working on new ways to bring in leads. Data shows that the quicker a lead gets contacted after opting in for a call, the higher the close rate is. So, a hot incoming lead, which is sent to a salesperson to call instantly, is going to hugely increase conversions over a cold or warm lead.

Even if you have BDMs on the road, they’d benefit more from having an appointment setter making appointments for them, rather than spending hours a day, or a day a week, setting things up themselves. This is a job that can be done by an appointment setter with very little training, and doesn’t require a high paid salary plus car plus phone to do.

Bringing on appointment setters or creating a strong marketing funnel, with a constant influx of leads that are distributed quickly to your team, is the best thing you can do for both you and them. They get to focus on what they’re good at — selling — and you get to see a big upturn in sales once you remove the barriers to them doing just that.

– Leela
CEO, Iron Cage

If you have questions about anything in this article – the metrics we track or how to apply them to your business, I’d love to offer you a FREE, no obligation 60 minute sales audit. I’ll spend an hour with you, looking at your existing sales strategy, how your sales people are operating, and putting together a plan with you on your next best steps for implementing organisational change so that you can hit your sales goals.

Use the link below to book in a time.