Keep Your Team Safe From Zombies
A cool green light illuminated her face slightly in the early morning hours as she opened her laptop.
The air was damp and cool. An eerie mist coiled around the city, wrapping its grip around all the streets’ and alleys’ hidden corners. From our vantage point on the 18th floor, we couldn’t even see the surface below. The fog obscured the base of the neighboring skyscrapers as they reached up past our view, like legs of a giant concrete centipede stepping all around us.
Steam rose from the fresh cup of coffee in her hands. She took a sip as she leaned closer into the glow. We were the first two people that got to work that early.
She gasped as a horrified look crept over face and she turned towards me.
“We have two-hundred and thirty new leads this morning,” she said as her face melted from calm, past worried, to frightened; “How will we ever be able to speak to them all??”
A disconnect exists between the marketing team and the sales team. Too frequently marketers measure their performance based on the number of leads that they bring in, and the sales team is measured by the number of leads they can close.
But this relies on a major assumption — that all leads are created equal. The reality is, a surplus of leads can cost a sales team commissions, especially if the marketing team is bringing in hordes of poor-quality leads.
Lets work through an example: Imagine you have a small sales team of 3 people and each sales person can interact with 7 people in a day.
Scenario A: You bring in 20 new leads in a day, and 10 of them are healthy leads that are likely to convert. This gives you a close-win ratio of 50%. Since Your max capacity of lead-touches in a day is 21, you can expect to close all 10 of your healthy, qualified leads (100%).
Scenario B: There is pressure from the board to close out the quarter on a high note, so marketing is getting the squeeze. They are encouraged to double the amount of leads that they bring in, so they make a few adjustments. After the changes are made, they are able to bring in 45 leads a day, but only 15 are healthy and likely to convert (33% close-win ratio).
Your sales team can still only talk to 21 of the 45 leads per day. Unless you have a way to identify the qualified leads the total number of close-win deals falls from 10, to 7 (21 * .33 ). The sales team gets scolded while the marketing team sips champagne.
Those 30 leads that are just kicking tires? Those are your dead-leads walking, your zombie leads. Many of them are too-far gone to ever bring back to life, but others are only a little sick. They could potentially be nurtured back to life with the right attention and care. Unfortunately your team’s time doesn’t scale, so you need to figure out another way to bring them back.
You need a way to snipe all of the zombie-leads before they enter your sales camp and overwhelm your team. You also need a safe way to quarantine the leads that are still turning. You want the sick leads to receive the care they need without exposing your sales team to the virus.
Want to know HOW to keep to keep your team safe from Zombies? Read the entire post on the ActiveCampaign strategy blog…
