Lists, Leads, and a Ladder to Success

Here’s how one IT vendor discovered that the best way to qualify leads is to let a specialist firm do the job.

CenterBeam provides managed IT services to midmarket companies across the United States. “We have a comprehensive portfolio and the infrastructure to deliver remotely,” explains Karen Hayward, CenterBeam’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. “We go for customers with more than 200 employees.”

The firm sells to many industries but does best in such verticals as construction or real estate and with companies that have many locations, remote offices, or traveling staff. CenterBeam’s five direct salespeople seek high-dollar business, with a typical client bringing in revenue of $10,000 to $90,000 per month.

Early in the millennium, Hayward was looking for ways to reach CFOs in her target market. Most midmarket firms do not have chief information officers, just IT directors who are responsible for operations but not business decisions. “We knew the only way to get CFOs in a targeted, precise fashion is over the telephone. We looked at doing it in-house, and it took five minutes to know that was a nonstarter for us.” CenterBeam did not want to invest in the people, processes, and technology to run a lead-development program.

Hayward worked briefly with an Austin lead firm, and “it was a disaster,” she remembers. But she had been approached as a prospect several times by PointClear Solutions, and in 2003 she decided to meet with PointClear president Dan McDade to see what his firm could do for her. Hayward had learned what did not work from the earlier disaster and knew what she wanted in a lead partner.

“We went in pretty skeptical, with me saying, ‘Show me, show me, show me,’” Hayward remembers. “Most call centers say they will talk to C-level execs, but they mean CIOs. Very few have the staff to have business-level conversations with CFOs.”

PointClear reassured Hayward from the outset. “They have a very well defined process for on-boarding clients. Their program manager spent a lot of time understanding our value proposition,” she explains. The PointClear program manager even wrote a book on how to approach CenterBeam prospects, which CenterBeam now uses to train its own salespeople. 

PointClear would manage the lead database, segment it, and determine where CenterBeam could achieve its greatest success. This was an improvement also. “Other call centers say, ‘You gave us lousy names, and that is why we’re not successful,’” Hayward notes.

And PointClear puts together a “call flow,” rather than a call script. “A CFO will get off [the telephone] pretty quickly if you use a script,” she adds.

McDade says most call centers use low-paid, low-level callers. His firm employs experienced associates with an average age of 37 years and a four-year college degree. “It is more expensive,” he says, “but we have happier clients.”

Finally, PointClear took complete responsibility for training its associates. “I was out of that loop,” Hayward says. “This is a self-sustaining program.” 

CenterBeam initially gave PointClear a wide choice in seeking raw leads. “We said no government and no banks [and gave PointClear] ten verticals, and at that time we wanted [prospective customers to have] a minimum of one hundred employees,” Hayward explains. Based on results, the firm has since raised the bar to a range of 200 to 4,000 employees.

PointClear starts out with multiple lead sources, including OneSource and D&B, then it researches further to refine these lists and identify key individuals. There are 10 elements in its qualification criteria, including budget, authority, need, and timing (BANT), but they go well beyond the standard BANT rules.

“BANT alone does not work in solution selling, because it does not take into account priority, or what we call the ‘tree in the living room,’” McDade explains. His firm also looks at technical environment, pressures for change, and shifts in senior executives, among other factors.

Each qualification cycle is multitouch, multimedia, and works through 12 steps. Calls, voicemails, and emails are used and direct marketing is tested. Once an associate believes a lead is qualified, he takes audio files of calls and documentation to a PointClear supervisor for review. If the supervisor agrees, files and documents are forwarded to the program manager for further review, and support services confirms that all required information is included.

Approved qualified leads are then exported to CenterBeam’s CRM system, and the sales process begins. “Sales reps review audio files, visit the prospect’s Website to understand the business issues and competitors, and then must ask themselves if they are ready to have a business-level conversation at the strategic level,” Hayward says (see CenterBeam’s Precall Planning Steps).

CenterBeam reps can reject the leads, but disagreements on qualification are rare. Last year, Hayward and her CEO reviewed the audio files on 126 qualified leads and disagreed on the merits of only one. Sometimes a rep may contact a good lead, but the CFO is just not in the mood to talk. “That’s life, that’s selling,” Hayward says. And PointClear has a process for “reheating” qualified leads if initial contacts do not pay off. Overall, CenterBeam closes from 3 to 7 percent of qualified leads. 

PointClear’s analytics are used to focus future lead qualification. The firm meets quarterly with CenterBeam to review results, see where CenterBeam is getting the most traction, define emerging segments, and estimate the balance in each market. “For example, in medical-device sales, every time PointClear speaks to a CFO, we can tell what the rate of qualified leads are,” Hayward says. “We can optimize our focus.”

Overall results have been strong. CenterBeam consistently gets more than half its new business from PointClear’s qualified leads, and the rest comes from referrals, inbound calls, and Web visits. Total revenue has been growing at 34 percent annually, and CenterBeam grew steadily in 2008, even though its customers were getting hammered by the recession.

PointClear is now assigning an account manager to focus on potentially high-dollar leads – firms with more than 500 employees. And it is using social media to spot the executive changes that can help qualify a lead quickly.

Many Reps Do Their Own Qualifying
Brian Poole is a sales manager with BNB, which provides commercial truck loans. He says his sales reps do most lead gathering and qualifying themselves: “We work through our dealerships primarily. Over time, the reps get to know them.”

Reps interview the prospects over several weeks to qualify them. There are some efforts by marketing to expand the lead base, “but a lot of [the qualifing process] gets down to relationships and networking,” Poole says. “It is real old-fashioned.” BNB does not use any software to gather, qualify, or track leads in the pipeline. Poole explains that the process is “very hands-on.”

Craig O’Connor is president of O’Connor Consulting, which sells commercial insurance to businesses. “You can sit around sending mailings and emails and waiting for the leads to come in,” O’Connor observes. “We take the approach of old-fashioned hitting the streets and making the cold calls.”

He starts out with lists of possible leads from Salesgenie, infoUSA, the Yellow Pages, and networking functions. His reps then make the cold calls and go to face-to-face meetings to qualify prospects. “We try not to get caught up in technology; we try to keep it simple and just dial in.”

He sets up territories for his reps and lists industry verticals for them to contact. Although O’Connor sells across many sectors, he has found it most efficient to concentrate on one vertical for one month at a time. That way, reps can conduct the up-front research on the vertical, learn about the industry’s challenges, and refine their knowledge as they make the calls. 

“You have to set goals in cold calling – how many calls you are going to make each day, how many appointments you are going to get,” O’Connor says. “As they get familiar with an industry vertical, they know what is happening in that industry, and they can build value on the front end. We also want to make sure [the prospects] can afford our solution and have a need for it.”

O’Connor has an internal database to track the qualification process and uses SugarCRM, as well. “If I meet or one of my people meets ten prospects and nothing happens, I want to know why. They may not be in a financial position to buy, but it is my job to know why. If they let us in the door and we don’t sell, that is just  shooting ourselves in the foot.”