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As Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse.”

However, as history has shown, a faster horse wasn’t really what people needed — a new form of transportation was. These days, every sales manager is looking for the “all-star” sales representative with the big Rolodex (a faster horse).

Instead what they need is a new approach to lead generation optimization,” according to Dan Derosier, vice president, Three Deep Marketing, St. Paul.

Brave New World Of Sales

A new sales paradigm has emerged. A recent study by SiriusDecisions, a B2B research firm, found that it takes 125 communications to get one prospect appointment (not sale) for a product-based company and 175 communications for a service-based company, explains Derosier.

“That means that the old ways of a sales rep dialing for dollars just isn’t cost effective. To make matters worse, sales cycles are longer, conversion rates are lower and decisions are made by committees (not individuals), so reps have to be networking everywhere in an organization to influence the final decision.”

Brian Carroll, CEO, InTouch, Inc., Arden Hills, and author of “Lead Generation for the Complex Sale,” echoes that sentiment. “The challenges are different today than 10 years ago. Once upon a time, there were many face-to-face meetings between decision-makers and salespeople.

Then along came the Internet and those once-valued meetings started taking place later in the buying process, if at all,” he explains. “This increasing technology, more decision makers in the process, more options for buyers and the faster pace of business leave little time or inclination for buyers to seek out a provider.”

Local sales coach Todd J. Anderson agrees. “The biggest differences are the use of e-mail and voice mail, which serve as screening mechanisms, making it harder to reach and sell to decision makers.”

Success Strategies

So how do you face these daunting challenges? “One effective strategy is to consolidate marketing and sales into a single team, working from the same database,” advises Carroll. “It is the marketer’s job to find, qualify and nurture leads until the prospect is ready to buy. It is the salesperson’s job to close the sale when the prospect has reached ‘sales-ready status’ with marketing.”

Anderson agrees that qualifying prospects is important. “If you sell high-ticket items with a relatively long sales cycle (90+ days), focus on qualifying your prospects by doing up-front research,” he says. Derosier recommends these success strategies:

• Find, buy or build a targeted list of decision-makers and influencers.

• Create new content with low risk offers that convert “the buyer” from “prospect to lead” and from “lead to buyer.”

• Determine key messages and confirm that your new selling process aligns with their buying process.

• Centralize the entire process so the marketing and sales organizations are integrated and both benefit.

• Automate the messages and processes with enabling technology, where feasible. “The bottom line: You can’t do things the same old way and expect different results,” says Derosier.