The complex sale is not about mass marketing. Rather, the complex sale focuses on the specific needs and wants of the target audience. It is valuable to businesses that are engaged in long-term sales processes that require prolonged education and nurturing of the prospect. These companies generally provide solutions to their clients, who tend to be more sophisticated, are targeted to solving specific critical business issues and are managed deliberately and with precision. The complex sale most often manifests itself in the environment of business- to-business marketing.

Marketers today are constantly reminded that the company needs more sales leads . . . now. Unfortunately, that immediacy quite often is at the direct expense of quality. A flood of ordinary, everyday leads does not mean that successful sales will follow. The challenge, therefore, is to tailor and adopt lead generation programs that will increase the odds of creating better sales leads, ultimately resulting in long-term, happy and profitable customers. My firm operates on the premise of eight critical success factors underlying the kind of lead generation programs that will best serve today’s complex sale objectives. In terms of the properly reciprocating lead generation process, any one of these is as important as the others.

The critical eight
The following are eight critical success factors needed for success in any lead generation program:

-Conversation, Not Campaign
- Sales and Marketing as a Team
- An Ideal Customer Profile
• A Universal Lead Definition
• An Effective Lead Management Process
• A Foundational Database
• Integrated Multimodal Tactics
• Consistent Lead Nurturing

conversation, not campaign

Lead generation isn’t about instant gratification, but rather requires sustained effort to succeed, often over a relatively long period of time. Key words are consistency and time. Companies don’t buy; people do. The goal of well-developed lead generation plans, therefore, is to evolve relationships between people through dialogue that positions the lead generation effort as conversation to identify, initiate and nurture productive selling situations. Research shows that buyers in an executive position clearly choose the sales person who has not only been a resource but who has also developed an ongoing relationship with them, regardless of their timing to buy. Customers regularly illustrate the need for sales people who call on them to understand both their business and their needs while being sensitive to the pressures under which they operate. Sales people who meet these criteria become known as trusted advisors, and trusted advisors get the sale. Relationship building includes sustaining the relevancy of ongoing dialog. When customers have a problem, you want them to turn to you first, someone they trust, for a solution. The objective is to wedge that level of trust into the affiliation as a relationship builder while always keeping in mind that the customer is thinking, “How you sell me is how you will serve me.”  

“Companies don’t buy; people do.” 

Buying process tactics funnel

Mapping out your sales process can ensure conformity with the customer’s buying process, driven by a clear understanding of needs and the impact of those needs on both that company and its customers. Inevitably, every potential customer has a different buying process. Does everyone involved in the lead generation program understand your prospect’s buying process? This can be viewed from the perspective of the modalities it employs at each buying step. I use figure 1, illustrated on the next page, to develop the correlation in specific instances between steps in the buying process and the sales effort together with tactics that might work at each stage. The key business issues for each individual in the buying process must be understood and addressed. Consistency is critical.

Each touch, or contact, should add value through its ongoing relevance to the targeted individual, and consistency extends to the style of delivery of the message. Because the sales team is responsible for much of the customer’s perception of the company, concerted care must go into developing the ongoing, relevant communication the sales team will employ in its relationship-building efforts with customers.

All companies go through steps of one kind or another in their buying process. We can’t force them to skip steps, but we can help with lead nurturing y instilling regular and meaningful communication that aids their progress and their process.

Sales and marketing as a team The best mindset, strategy and tactics – and the most astute sales and marketing individuals – are for naught without the collaboration of everyone involved. The unrealized potential can be likened to the batteries in a flashlight. If the batteries aren’t inserted in the right direction or are otherwise out of proper contact, their latent power is unusable.

Likewise, the harmonious interaction of sales and marketing is crucial. If they are askew and going in dissimilar directions, sales and marketing will not empower a successful complex sale or sales lead strategy. Bottom-line sales performance reflects just how well sales and marketing are working together.

Lead generation, consistently the most significant touch point between sales and marketing, offers a variety of opportunities for improving teamwork. However, the workflow of both departments is linear and seems determined to go only in one direction. Without bidirectional communication, effective lead generation suffers for lack of a closed-loop feedback process and consequent poor results. With a feedback process in place, each department has a better sense of what the other needs in order to accomplish their mutual goals. Melding inherently diverse viewpoints and inputs in today’s commoditized business environment is important to a well-oiled marketing and sales machine that produces good sales leads and positive results.

The solution for building bi-directional communication between the two, resulting in lead generations Programs that flourish and generate acceptable ROI, starts with the proper direction and management from the senior executive level. Like the complex sale, lead generation, with all its facets and interactions, can usually be sparked only by the CEO who believes in it.

It is incumbent on marketers to view the sales team as its prospective customer, both from the standpoint of problems and opportunities. The sales team thus becomes so integrated that it has program ownership just like everyone else. Taking that further, if sales is the other customer to marketing, why not, in the interest of developing answers, position marketing as the customer of sales?

Companies seeking cooperation and teamwork sometimes believe they can perform miracles by reorganizing the sales and marketing departments. Interdepartmental reorganization appears to offer little value to lead generation programs. What matters most is having everyone on the same page, integrated and respecting one another as pro forma customers.

“Sales and marketing should have a unified understanding and consensus on what the definition of a sales lead is.” 

An ideal customer profile  

Those at or near the top should be accurate reflections of your ideal customer profile. Take the top and bottom customers and prospects and build a more detailed profile. Populate the profile with such things as:

• Annual revenue
• Standard Industrial Code (SIC) and North American Industry Classification (NAICS)
• Number of employees
• Level of contact and functional area
• Local, regional or national scope
• Business situation
• Psychographics aspects

Psychographics aspects may be corporate values, culture, philosophy, leadership and internal/ external factors that have an overt affect on the company. Determine the most important attributes to replicate. It should be readily apparent that there is a marked difference between those on the best customer list and those on the worst. Does a best customer show the inclination to be well managed with long-term growth, while a worst customer exhibits continual reorganization and declining revenues? There will be other attributes specific to an industry. From these factors, you’ll be able to determine your ideal customer profile.

If launching a new company, product or service, this data probably won’t be available. Develop a profile of what you believe will have the likely fits. There are ancillary ways of locating such data – e.g., competitors or trade associations.  

A universal lead definition

A universal sales lead is one that has been determined to fit the profile of the ideal customer. It prioritizes and defines the degree of sales readiness. It has been qualified as sales ready and it spells out the responsibilities and accountabilities of the corporate lead generation team members (the sales and marketing people) and requires their buy in. Many companies lack a clear understanding what defines a sales lead. They fail, as a result, to make lead definition a credible part of their marketing efforts. There is consensus that sales functionaries fail to act on nearly 80 percent of the leads they get, largely because most of the leads aren’t qualified, or because appropriate buyers haven’t been identified and targeted.

John Coe, in The Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales & Marketing (McGraw-Hill), says: “The job of marketing is to develop a lead generation system that matches the readiness of the buyer with the expectations of your sales person.”

Creating a universal lead definition for any given opportunity starts with ferreting out what sales and marketing consider to be the characteristics of an ideal sales opportunity. For each opportunity, it’s important to know what constitutes a good sales lead, what initiative or need makes this a good fit and what information is necessary to determine if the lead is worth a follow-through. Who are the economic buyers and influencers? What does the prospective company value? What is its culture? Are there common business issues? From there, it’s critical to determine what information is required, in order to qualify the lead in terms of how the company currently qualifies a prospect. This includes questions necessary to get must-have and nice-to-have answers.  

Lead qualification is a process that focuses on rating and scoring all inquiries, regardless of source, according your universal lead definition. By using a lead qualification process, your sales team can rest assured that they will only receive truly sales ready leads. Once it is known where the leads fit into the sales process – and the customer’s buying process

– the appropriate marketing actions can be determined. This allows nurturing of leads that aren’t yet sales ready and, where necessary, the sales team can hand leads back to marketing for further qualification.

It is further important to be able to differentiate between near-term, mid-term and long-term leads by establishing a timeframe to evaluate and implement the solution. Budget considerations and funding authority also enter in, and it would be helpful to identify any specific behaviors or traits of the target audience.

Finally, functions or buy points should be targeted for key contact information. There should be knowledge of how interest is created and driven in order to focus the solution and what compelling event generated the interest in this case. Who is involved as the buying process evolves? Who or what drives the initiative? What is the best entry point?

“More ROI is reaped from the patient tending of potential customers over time.”

 An effective lead management process

Lead management has the role of watching and directing the conversion of sales leads into customers. Figure 2, on the next page, shows how the well-organized lead management program should look. The “funnels” representing marketing and sales functions illustrate the lead management process and its components, together with their interaction. The success of the marketing funnel directly impacts that of the sales funnel. The effective lead management program implements and enforces standard, universal leadscoring definitions and establishes a clear process for handling and distributing inquiries and leads. Inquiries can be dealt with centrally for prequalification before sending them on to sales as sales-ready leads. Such a program is geared to identifying best opportunities based on application of a consistent methodology based on your sales process and the buying process of your potential customers. It assigns clear responsibility for lead tracking and closed-loop feedback. Measurement of sales performance against objective criteria is thus enabled, such as sales lead acceptance and the degree of follow-up by the sales team. It also facilitates mechanisms and incentives for sales team feedback, and updating measures revenue contribution to ultimately drive better return on marketing investment.

table 3 Sales Process Table 

Step Status Description

0 FYI Review requires special attention

1 Appointment Lead qualified by marketing and sent to sales to be qualified
2 Qualifying Sales person is determining if lead is actually a viable prospect
3 Prospect Sales person actively pursuing
4 Profiled Completed written proposal profile and opportunity assessment
5a Preproposal Confirming initial plan prior to formal proposal
5b Proposed Final proposal delivered
6 Committed Agreement delivered and verbal yes to proposal
7 Active Contract Agreement approved and signed

A Nurturing Was prospect and dropped out of the sales pipeline
B Follow-up Sent back to marketing for requalification, rescheduling, or lead nurturing
C Rejected This clearly wasn't a lead - returned to marketing

Not a fit Lead advanced beyond step 3 in sales process - sales person decided not a fit  

A foundational database

Your database is a valuable asset. While still one of the most overlooked tools in lead generation strategies, a clean, updated database is nequivocally essential to the success of any lead generation program.
The properly designed and well-maintained database is the hub of all lead generation activity and communication. It is the rallying point for collaboration between marketing and sales and promotes a spirit of cooperation among other diverse corporate groups including information technology, whose responsibility it is to create and implement the database.

Because many are involved in the complex sale, it’s important that the useful information about a prospect is captured in a single central location that is accessible to all. The centralized database enables collection and consolidation of information from many sources into a uniform format.

The ideal customer profile and universal lead definition should drive the fields in the database, and such fields as those required to expedite the steps in a lead generation program, of course, must exist to capture the required data points. Control of the lead passes from one person to the next with all of the applicable information fixed in one place. It must be clear to the sales department that the database is a vital component requiring the commitment to keeping it dynamic and functioning. Marketing’s responsibility is to maintain that awareness and to respond immediately to feedback from sales.

Integrated multimodal tactics

To be successful in generating leads for a complex sale, marketers can't rely on one specific tactic; rather, they must leverage a portfolio of tactics. An informed strategy is required for reaching the targeted decision makers, a strategy with multimodality of tactics and repetition of message as key elements. A multimodal lead generation plan heightens the response rate potential, due to the fact that it more effectively impacts contacts and their spheres of influence. While overcoming the inherent challenges associated with timing, this enhances audience awareness as well.

So, what about multimodality of tactics? The CEO who asked his marketing manager about the most effective tactics for generating leads and got the response “all of them” probably wasn’t pleased that it takes more than one. The objective of initiating dialogue with a prospective company can be fulfilled in many ways. It might be by way of an initial face-to-face meeting. Or, he or she may have been motivated by other means to make contact with you. Regardless of how dialogue has been established, other tactical modes to keep it going – e-mail, direct mail, business events, et al. – should be ready and waiting to be brought into play.

Consistent lead nurturing

A carefully crafted lead nurturing program anticipates the prospect’s questions with timely answers. This inspires awareness that you are creating value information. Relevancy is the key. By consistently offering relevant content lead nurturing, the potential customer’s inner dialogue will be inclined to have been talking for quite awhile. You understand me, my company and have given me useful and pertinent ideas on this issue. You have helped my colleagues and they understand and accept it. I realize this is going project, but I think you can do it. Let’s get it going.”

The true value of lead nurturing comes from the disciplined technique of while providing the “right” information throughout the evaluation and buying result is optimized mind share, efficient budget spending, profitable relationships increased business.

in the end...

The complex sale requires a proven approach that depends on diligence Lead generation specialists are committed to the long-term proposition educating prospects, navigating the nuances of the complex sale and creating return on investment is what has brought lead generation to the position marketing hierarchy today . . . vis-à-vis the eight critical success factors.