Please, Stop Wasting B2B Leads!
“Stop wasting B2B leads!” Not a phrase that many of you would expect to hear, and certainly, not what you would want to hear is happening in your business.
Generating B2B sales leads is bloody difficult! It takes a lot of time, money, effort and skill to generate them, so why waste them?
Regular readers of my blog, you will know this is a pet hate of mine. Usually, it is not following up inbound enquiries that I moan about, hence launching our “Inbound Follow-up service“, however, I recently experienced a new low in B2B Lead wastage…
A Prime Example of Lead Wastage…
Last week, I received several calls from a telemarketer, working for an accountancy firm. They were completely cold and at one point she caught me between work: so, I took the call.
The salesperson was great; knowledgeable, warm, efficient, not pushy but focused on getting the appointment. In fact, they were so good I offered her a job. We may be looking for an accountant, so I agreed to a meeting.
It became apparent that the salesperson worked for an outsourced agency, so this accountancy firm was paying significant sums to generate qualified sales leads.
The call ended with an agreed date and time for the meeting and confirmation that the accountant would send me a meeting request including contact details for the person coming to meet me.
The morning of the meeting arrived, and I was out of the office heading towards another meeting. I received a call from the salesperson confirming everything for later in the day. But, I had completely forgotten about it, I hadn’t received any details or an invitation for my diary. Many apologies from still an excellent salesperson, a new date was confirmed together with an assurance that the accountant would confirm all the details with me.
You guessed it… still no email, meeting request or information.
Now there could be legitimate reasons for doing this twice;
- They don’t want to work with us for some reason
- They’re too busy
- They’re too lazy
- They can’t be bothered
- New business might not be a priority
- They might’ve forgotten
Not one of these reasons gives me any confidence in them providing me with a good service as my accountant. If you can’t treat me well as a prospect, what does this say about how you would treat me as a customer?
What Should have been Done?
- Empower the outsourced agency to complete the process and send meeting requests. This is what we do, a smooth appointment handover avoids lead wastage
- Ensure available resources and processes to follow up all appointments efficiently, this gives a good impression to prospects and again, reduces any chance of lead wastage.
- Cleanse the data, so it only contains targeted companies they want to sell to. Why waste time chasing companies you aren’t interested in?
All of the above are easy changes to make and would ensure a more successful campaign, so why do I get so pissed off? Yes, it has wasted my time but more importantly, it is what it says about my industry that I feel so passionately about.
We provide B2B lead generation services, but, rightly so, are judged on the success of the sales. If a client doesn’t sell they look to us and I’m sure that this is the case with the accountancy firm.
The telemarketing company will be judged on the sales the client gets. Yet it’s the client who has wasted this lead and no doubt in the future will be saying telemarketing doesn’t work.
So please, do everything you can to stop wasting B2B leads! A qualified lead should be treated as a priority. If each one is considered important, then you will start converting and selling more.
