Alas, Lead generation doesn't always work, and I'm so looking forward to living a little bit! The tools are buggy, the profiles and emails are blocked, but I wish to sleep peacefully. To provide the continuity of the process, we buy additional tools, but they are unlikely to give the desired result. There are a lot of questions, but enough answers to them either.
What if we reconsider our behavior and start to work smart, not the classical scheme—more spam, more chances to reach someone? The time has come to reinvent ourselves and change stereotypes of “street dealers” thinking, although it still helps someone to survive…
This aim of the article is to help you to go beyond the usual framework of behavior in the organization of companies. A lot has been written, and most of you have taken absolutely little into execution. And your questions are always the same.
Let's analyze what activities seem normal to you.
First part is about the main lead generation problems
1. No profile is an island. Having one profile or one email account you can't pretend to have any creativity, don't even try. Yes, for cool offers, when you know your ICP and close deals faster than you get to the office by bus—one profile is enough. But when we need to take to work more than 1 ICP but try to reach and stir interest of a big scope of companies and contacts at the same time—you need your own LinkedIn team! But don't use fake accounts, they have zero conversions.
2. How do you collect contacts and how do you develop data management processes? If you downloaded a bundle of data through any extractors, went just above diagonal, then it turned out right away—30-40% of those did not accept your request in LinkedIn or surprised you with non-validated mails. If you went through the answers in your database and rejected everyone who did not answer you, you lost another 20-30% of conversions after 1-2 months of warming-up.
3. Your ICP idea generation is elaborated in the first hypothesis created. You need to read a lot and cultivate a thirst for knowledge. That's exactly what it is! If you don't have a thirst for knowledge you will never make a good hypothesis and sell poorly if you are not curious—this is for sure. Accuracy and brevity of ideas will come immediately after the first ICP generated by you.
But what's next? What will you develop? What will you try to sell? Read reports, attend specialized sites about technologies or niches, join conferences, follow experts on Twitter, chat with them in groups and delve into the market. Write down and formulate ideas for later, about how you can be useful to them really.
4. Lead generation department work organization. There is no description of the processes in How-to-do-it-right mode, in one place, with all the specifics. Usually it's all scattered оn different tabulations, folders, with different accesses. Management and tasks are in Telegram and Slack but not on the Task Board with personal responsibility marks for performing, deadline or, finally, overall planning. Chaos is in most lead generation departments. And it kills all efficiency.
5. Data collection is a great song. You copy the link to a Sales Navigator, and everything that you filter there, and what Sales Navigator gives,—you download to your tools or scrapers. You act like you have never heard of Cleaning up the database for compliance with ICP. No, it's not for you, too complicated. Really? What's taking so long? Let's start sending sequences to everyone immediately! Go ahead! A week has passed! Oops!? Oh! What happened,—CEO asks? And why did only 0.1% of all add us? Oh, why are there no answers at all? Oh, why did LinkedIn block our profile? What have we done so terrible? Your contact base is your face. If it's dirty—well, you know.
6. Qualification of answers is just the most gnarly part of any sales process and department. Qualification skills need to be honed endlessly. Not everyone has the ability to ask questions accurately in the right place, at the right time. So, if you think that any colleague from data researcher to a sales rep being put in this position will handle the process the same way effectively, you are tying yourself in knots. This is a separate process that needs to be developed in parallel from others. Just chatting—is one thing, communicating professionally and having a certain set of hard skills—is another one.
Operating system in the sales department
1. Clear structure of the sales department. Is there also not clear who not clear what doing in your department? Hmm, strange, they are sales, what else can they do but sell? And if you divide the team into Data Research, SDR, Sales, Accounting, then you will also paint all with the same brush? So here we go then:
—"I was invited to the company to do one thing, and a week later I'm sitting and collecting databases" 🙂
—So what? You're getting paid, shut up!
2. All is in a peasemeal form. So when looking for something you should open 700 tabs. Familiar situation? And there is not even a search function to remember and find where that very mailing template is. Or your Head demonstrated on the video broadcast how to work with CRM, but you forgot everything at once, and there was no description below and it's more of a core for you to review the videos.
3. Tool management. You have installed one tool five years ago and still use it with the whole team, because it's a big deal for you to think and to learn. But why don't you admit the fact that tools are getting cheaper, expand functions and just perform better.
4. Maturity and attitude. Who is a mature sales rep, you say? He is the one who is not afraid to introduce something new, does not sit back, and shows real leadership to go and change things in the company. If you still recruit those whom you want to suppress with your authority and do not allow anyone to earn credibility, then you will work with children, noone else.
Sales as a whole
Sales management largely consists of a formed process: where we take new knowledge, how we check the performance, how many ideas we generate. If you have problems with at least one of these items—you have poor management.
How to organize good manageability?
The first thing to do is to describe everything that is in your head and transform it into an understandable process and easy for everyone to accomplish from Mon. to Fri. Make regular meetings with all teams, it is especially important if you work online, avoid any vacuum here.
The second most important thing is how we assess the situation. Most managers stay under illusions "all goes according to plan" up until the last day when the ship has sunk. Everything should be measured, calculated and planned.
The third key point is the constant flow of new ideas and improvements. When one day in order to complete the probationary period faster you decide to make a breakthrough in the eyes of the CEO—you take the initiative and think. In other cases, you just keep silent and just observe the situation.
System behavior mostly is not in the sales reps nature at all. Talking is not a job actually. Systematicity means consistency and performance. What are the main problems of any sales department? For instance, you open a CRM, but there is no data, no work progress marks or they are entered higgledy-piggledy and thus lead statuses are not clear. Everybody sculpts what he wants and when he wants. Systematicity is what many people lack. It is not passed from generation to generation, it needs to be trained and such behavior should be proper to the Head of department. If the Head is not systematic, not organized but chaotic, what kind of sales department he will have? Well, you get the idea. Everything is in words, here and there, then reduced to one—and we have zero result.
The fourth most painful issue is the results planning. Especially, when three first clients have fallen off, and the next four are just entering their journey. So what you can do in the service business cyclically—is to average up the numbers. Only those have cool planning who make it not in the funnel, but with the numbers that were recorded from the channels, with the activities attached, and who will boldly and sensibly evaluate new activities, investments and will proportionally attribute this planning for a short period of 1-2 months. Since the war has begun, planning for 6 months or a year went into the trash.
So what are the wishes for the future?
In future, you need to have a strong system! Everyone should work equally there. This is not the task of the Head only, because he is paid more, so let him work himself. The whole team, the whole company should want to work like a Swiss watch. If my company "Neuronslab" did not work like clocks, we would not have made a deal with our investor in 3 years and would not have sold it in wartime. There should be logic everywhere, prescribed actions, understandable algorithms of work even for the sales department—where there are many variables. You are already a winner if you are capable of systematic and disciplined work. Next, you need to find the same disciplined and nimble guys (yes, this happens), and you will get the following bonus—manage to fit all your energy into a little digital box that will be a pleasure of the grunt work.