Do You Know Where Your Leads Are?

If your telephone company, reseller or master agency is like other entities, it spends 10 percent to 30 percent of its revenue on sales and marketing, according to Gartner. However, the research firm says, you probably are unable to show ROI. A big part of this expenditure, of course, is lead generation. Therein lies the problem. Though hard won, leads are often lost. About 70 percent of all leads across industries are not acted upon because they are not in the right hands at the right time, Gartner says.

Admittedly, Gartner’s data is few years old (fall 2002) and not specific to telecom, but nonetheless they are telling even if the stats have improved somewhat over time or if telecom industry marketers have been able to do a better job than their peers in other industries.

This gap between marketers’ intentions and the sales team’s actions can be attributed to inadequate tracking processes. It is not enough to simply generate the leads, they must be managed.

According to lead-management vendor Blueroads, this means:

1. Getting each lead to a sales person.

2. Ensuring that every prospect is promptly contacted, qualified and (hopefully) sold.

3. Providing feedback on all leads to “close the loop” and build metrics.

While companies may have these processes in place internally, where they routinely fall short is in extending lead lifecycle management to their indirect channels. The leads often go into a black hole where the vendor loses track of them and its ability to monitor the effectiveness of its marketing, Blueroads says.

Since telecom service providers rely so heavily (some for half or more of their revenue) on the channel to serve small and midsize businesses in particular, it is critical to improve visibility into the channel and to help the channel maximize their opportunities.

To find out more about how to do this, PHONE+ and its sister publication, xchange, have teamed with Blueroads to share Best Practices In Lead Management For Indirect Sales in an upcoming Webinar. Blueroads has lengthy experience serving high-tech channels and has sponsored research that pinpoints the common failure points and systematic ways to fix them.

Please join us on Aug. 21 at 2 p.m. ET. http://www.phoneplusmag.com/blueroads