This blog was updated on July 17th, 2018
Lead Quantity vs. Lead Quality: Which do you choose?
Deciding what type of sales development strategy to deploy — high volume or account based — is a critical decision for your demand generation process. Do you prospect into a large universe with a general message or do you take an Account Based Outbound approach? The answer will often depend on your specific market & solution. It is important to note that you will likely not find yourself exclusively dedicated to either strategy, but knowing which strategy to task your sales development reps (SDRs) with as their standard will help produce the best results for your sales team.
Focus on Lead Quantity: A High Volume Approach
When?
If you are a new player in your market or if your market is an emerging presence, you will likely have to educate your prospects frequently. In many cases, there may be no initiative, budget, or near-term pain points related to your solution. In order to connect your sales team with interested prospects, you should lower the qualification to maximize the number of conversations and introductions. Your sales reps should be prepared to have a role in qualifying leads and spend time doing so effectively.
How?
When SDRs need to focus on quantity, there are a few minor adjustments in strategy. There is still an important distinction to make from increasing activity by simply “smiling and dialing”. You still need to prospect intelligently, but you should be casting a wider net. Begin by shortening the call plan by reducing the number of touch points per prospect. This will allow you to increase the number of new accounts pulled in every day. By not having to worry about things like active initiatives, you will increase the number of quality conversations with interested prospects. The result will be more leads (although some will be tire kickers), exposure, and prospect feedback. For some teams, this is exactly what is needed to ramp up sales.
Focus on Lead Quality — An Account Based Approach
When?
If your solution is highly complex or you compete in a well established enterprise market. Expensive solutions with longer sales cycle will often fall into this category, as well. You will likely need to optimize your sales team’s time by making sure your SDRs pass leads that meet higher qualification requirements. Your highly paid sales reps will work less on lead qualification and more on closing business.
How?
When focusing on lead quality, SDRs should comb through each account to effectively qualify them in or out. Find definite evidence that there is or is not an active project within the organization. If not, identify the key decision maker for future marketing campaigns. To do this, extend the call plan for each prospect and make sure to be multi-threaded within an account. This will require more account mapping through data sources and internal referrals. The result will be appointments overall, but more hot leads for your sales team.
The demandDrive Strategy
One of demandDrive’s strongest differentiators is our ability to deliver either — or sometimes both — a high volume and a high quality of leads, depending on the appropriate strategy for our client’s needs. We help you identify the best approach, deliver leads accordingly, adjust when needed, and help generate predictable revenue. When a client requires a higher lead quality, we tailor our Account Based Outbound model to fit your requirements and provide unparalleled process design to maximize the ROI on your sales development efforts.
