Stop Asking Your Vendor For Leads

Now, I'm not saying that you can't get quality leads from your vendors. In fact, a lot of good business can come from them. What I am saying, however, is that when you look at your sales cycle, you might want to reconsider not only where you get your leads from but when you get them. Most vendors will tell you they won't commit to sending out a specific number of leads or what the condition of those leads will be. They will also tell you -- and justifiably so -- that you as a solution provider are better off generating your own leads. That is all true. But there is a more important reason for generating your own leads than simply being in control of your own destiny or taking the burden, cost and responsibility away from the vendor: Simply, by the time a prospect goes to a vendor's Web site or responds to an ad, it's too late. Here's why.

When a prospect goes to a vendor for information about its product and "becomes a lead," oftentimes that customer is already too far down the decision path to become a viable lead for you to work with. The end user has already been through its internal strategic planning and needs analysis, or its version of it. That means you've missed the opportunity to work with the prospect on forming its concepts as to what needs to be fixed, avoided, added or changed. At this point, the prospect is now looking for the best price or value for its dollar; you are chasing a deal and being reactive. The takeaway? Your goal should be to become part of the planning stage, not the product-evaluation stage.

In fact, the more complex the solution and the less of a commodity the product is you're selling, the more true that is. A company that needs a sophisticated accounting system, for example, has already been through numerous internal meetings about its needs and requirements. When it believes it has identified its plan of attack, it then goes to various vendors to compare features and prices. And, unfortunately, it's at that late stage you get the lead from the vendor.

So I ask you: Who is in control at this point? Certainly not you. You end up responding to RFPs that are already biased and skewed. You run around chasing answers to questions for which you have no idea where they will lead. You start including extra features at no extra cost and/or discounting your product without even knowing what value your solution has to the client. And all that because you've simply positioned yourself as a reactive order-taker. Jump, puppet boy! Jump!

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Now, what if you had a clear idea as to what the client's exact strategic needs were, how the right solution would benefit its business and what the ROI would be? Wouldn't that make you feel a little bit more in control? Wouldn't that help you design a solution that is the best one for the prospect's specific needs and, ultimately, make you and your prospect strategic partners?

By now it should be clear how the process of getting leads from your vendor puts the customer in control instead of you. Even worse, it drags out the sales cycle, and you end up "losing slowly."

A quick win is one in which you are in control from the beginning while working with the client to define its problems, needs and potential solutions. When it is time to make a purchase decision, it is much more straightforward and quick. But when the customer is in control, you get stalls, delays and runarounds. In the end, you will probably lose the deal because you had no idea what the prospect really needed, and you were jerked around every which way. Not only do you waste a lot of time, you also wind up losing in the end -- slowly.

As a solution provider, you must be proactive instead of reactive. You can't wait for your vendors. You, yourself, must enter the sales cycle in the beginning of a prospect's planning process and strategic discussions, identify the company's needs along with it, and become a trusted partner during the entire process. Determine your target accounts to go after and market to them. That will allow you to generate your own leads in the early stages.

As you begin working with these prospects, make sure you adhere to a structured sales process so as to follow a set pattern of best practices that work,each step being a consistent, proven process that will lead you from beginning to end, with you in control.

Market accordingly, create your own leads, go after them early and lead these clients down a path that provides the best solutions for their businesses and a successful sale for you.

Russ Lombardo is president of Peak Sales Consulting, where he helps companies develop and implement CRM strategies, sales processes and channel-development programs. He is also the author of the book CRM for the Common Man.