In the last few months we have seen a growing number of companies in a variety of sectors from telecoms to technology looking for sales leads to solve their short term problem, namely a lack of leads. In every case these customers have worked in markets structured around contractual tie in. Put simply they work in sectors where the vast (95% +) majority of their target market are contracted to a supplier for 1, 2 or even 3 years. We also note that none of them have a database of any size or accuracy, so they have no knowledge of who is in contract, when it ends or who their suppliers are – all fundamental for this kind of market.
So here is a simple question, if less than ten percent of the market might be considering changing supplier, how do any of these companies know who they should be speaking to and when to stand any chance of making a sale? The truth is they don’t and unless they start to think more intelligently about the market they serve, they won’t.
This is how short term thinking works – “Feed me now. I need leads because my sales guys don’t have any.”
The short term thinker’s answer is mass telemarketing, e-mail blasting and other relatively untargeted activities designed to generate leads. It does generate leads, but we are constantly told that leads generated this way are poor, by the same people who come to us asking us to generate better leads than the ones they get from lead generation.
At the end of all this frenzied activity, a few leads have been generated for these companies, but they still don’t have a database with useful information that includes contract end dates or suppliers. As a result they never move forward and get beyond their short term problem, having to revisit it again and again and so on.
As cycles go this is a pretty pointless and self defeating one, which can very easily be avoided. You need just two things:
- A database full of accurate data about your target customers, when their contracts end, who their suppliers are and what they have. (You can buy them, but they are usually inaccurate, so you are better building them yourself)
- Even a fairly simple understanding of how to nurture your market and ensure that you get a chance to pitch your products and services when a target customer’s contract is up for renewal.
With these two things you can work smarter and focus your efforts only on those potential customers that might be in the market. Of course there is one last thing you need – desire to get off the short term thinking rollercoaster.
This is the last time I will talk about short termism and why it just doesn’t work as in sales and marketing. If you haven’t got it by now, then we can’t help you get the quantity of leads you actually need.

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