Hard to digest but we have to face it and swallow this.

Brian Caroll, a lead generation evangelist wrote in his book Lead Generation for the Complex Sales:

 

 ”(…)Unfortunaltely, the time-honored struggle of sales to get a foot in the door fails miserably in context of the complex sales. to be successful, a carefully crafted, thoroughly researched, and proven lead generation strategy cannot come from Sales – any more than should modern sales people be burdened with the old, worn-out tactic of cold-call prospecting. Salespeople must be enabled to do what they do best-to sell, with leads that have been qualified as sales-ready(…)”

The 3 most important things in a Lead Generation campaign are: Data, Data… and Data.

First of all, we need to talk around:

• The data source (I.e. Where does the data comes from?)
• Lifecycle (I.e. When was the data updated?)
• Relevance (I.e. What are my key criteria for the companies and contacts I need to store in myDatabase?)
• Pertinence (I.e. How concise, precise and clear do I need my information to be?)
• Price (I.e. What is my budget? How much do I concede to data sourcing? )
• Timescale (I.e. How much time do I have to complete my campaign? Do I have time if I purchase cheap data and then employ resources to enhance it to reach the level of quality upon which my campaign execution phase will actually commence? What if Ibuy a fresh, accurate and hassle-free data from a data sourcing company to start off my campaign quickly and ensure a rate of success within my limited timeframe?)
• Database (I.e. Will my Database be able to handle the type of information I am looking to get? What are the possibilities to accomodate the data I want to purchase?)
• Reporting (I.e. What sort of analytics do I need?)

The clear success of a Lead Generation campaign in the complex sales depends on the Marketing and Sales efforts put together to identify the ideal-customer-profile, define the sales-ready lead and start the campaign with the right data.