A flower that is not watered, withers. A soil that is not cultivated becomes barren. A man who is not fed dies. These are different forms of neglect. Each has a dissimilar cause and leads to a diverse end. Though different, all share the same one thing; they are neglected.
In lead generation, be it business-to-customer (B2C) or business-to-business (B2B), neglect is a grave sin. When done, it results to lost opportunities, which is tantamount to lost profits. Whether it is intentional or not, neglect must not be done by the sales people in order to improve a firm’s lead generation.
Here are some of the different types that embody neglect.
Existing prospects are ignored. Generally, business organizations assume that once a sales lead is already in the pipeline, sales is guaranteed. This seems the reason why firms do not nurture existing prospects. They ignore them with the thought that such leads are going to buy sooner than later. However, they did not know that there was a catch: it is wrong.
Ignoring sales leads can be any company’s ticket to fiasco. Customers need to be informed, educated and updated. They want to know if a firm values them. When they don’t see the efforts, they will jump off the ship and look for another business entity which knows their worth.
Instead of doing such gross practice, companies ought to keep in touch with the existing accounts and constantly build rapport with them.
Loading the sales pipeline. The ever changing levels of sales pipeline is due to a company habit of not filling their sales pipeline. While some sales leads go and existing customers leave, the big hole left must be loaded with new prospects.
Every firm should not stop prospecting. Just imagine when lead generation programs for a group of leads are through and a company has nothing to follow-up.
Prospects are not nurtured. Frequently, sales team will not be able to keep the connection alive with the prospects who are not yet sales ready. They are more focused to those leads that are easy to close sales. The thing is majority of the new sales prospects are still deciding whether to buy or not and most of them convert into a sales-ready status if and only if they are nurtured. Therefore, sales team must properly distribute its workforce to take care every sales prospect.
Development is out of the picture. Doing business does not usually mean to stick with what’s traditional and what’s common. Some business organizations are satisfied with doing things repeatedly, without even exploring avenues for growth and development.
To be competitive in a business world, every firm ought not to stop developing and polishing its methods and practices. There are plenty of tactics companies can use to nurture leads and current customers. For instance, they can use telemarketing to generate leads and in keeping in touch with current customers.
No matter how and what strategy you use, sales leads should never be neglected. Always bear in mind that “Leads are the Bloodlines of Business”.
This post originally appeared at http://ambrking.hubpages.com
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