| It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that sales people must always be fully engaged in selling existing customers and acquiring new ones. It's increased sales volume that earns them bigger checks and drives your top line. They can't afford to waste time on unqualified tire kickers. So it shouldn't come as a surprise if sales people lose confidence when they think they've been given a disproportionate number of bad leads. Most often, bad leads are a consequence of inadequate lead qualification. Research suggests that bad leads cause sales people to stop following up on more than half of all leads! That's because they really have no way of identifying the good from the bad, so they cherry pick without any sound rationale. The company is the biggest loser. Customer acquisition costs grow, immediate sales are missed, valuable repeat business is lost, and scarce marketing funds are squandered.
Qualifying leads the right way provides more than enhanced sales productivity. It is also a wellspring of mission critical business intelligence - about specific prospects and about the target market as a whole. You're being short changed if you're not getting that added value as part of your lead qualification process. Customized, Professional Lead Qualification is the successful outcome of a consultative business discussion - between a well-educated, experienced Business Developer, fully at ease conversing with C-level executives and a key decision maker who wouldn't consider initiating a relationship with anyone less qualified.
Excellence in lead qualification is crucial. So it's not a task one should entrust to a $10 an hour 'telemarketer' working from a complex script or questionnaire. Not when the success of your Customer Acquisition program relies on cold approaches to C-level executives. You positively need to know that the introduction of your company is in the hands of someone you can trust with this enormous responsibility; someone who'll promote your valuable brand with pride. Introducing your company . . . eliciting the needs and concerns of the decision maker . . . identifying and offering your solution to resolve your prospect's pain . . . are the key factors in gathering market intelligence. It's the way to win more appointments for your sales force and enable them to close that all-important first sale, first time.
eti Sales Support hires only college-educated, professional Business Developers with substantial business experience. They know how to have conversations with decision-makers that are more like business consultations. They develop each opportunity as though they were peeling back the layers of an onion. Each response leads to another question . . . then another . . . in eti's unique method of gathering step by step information . . . until the prospect's pain is revealed.
The key to success is in skillfully establishing a relationship and in probing for the prospect's needs, his or her pain, details about the decision making processes, the competitive environment, business pressures, positioning and the company's strategic direction. Customized leads represent eti Sales Support's key differentiator. To live up to our mission of Maximizing Sales Productivity we supply only the highest quality leads to your sales force. So that when they get an eti customized lead, they know it is a highly qualified sales opportunity they can follow up with every confidence. Your sales force will quickly learn they can fully trust eti to accomplish that vital preparatory job for them.
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