All steps of the sales process are important; from identifying prospects to closing deals. However, most businesses spend lots of time refining and managing the latter stages (closing, etc.), but put limited thought into earlier stages (lead generation). Since lead generation fuels all other sales stages, a thoughtful approach to the function can have a huge impact on a company’s ability to sell.
Who is responsible for lead generation in your agency or firm?
There are two typical approaches that companies use: the first is to keep lead generation responsibility bundled with the other efforts of a salesperson, and the second is to split up the task and employ specialist staff to focus on lead generation. (Both approaches should be aided by technology).
Here’s a look at the pros and cons to both approaches.
The default approach is to have salespeople generate their own leads, in addition to the rest of their responsibilities throughout the sales cycle. This approach has a number of benefits, including the following:
More and more companies are splitting out their lead generation function; a dedicated staff focuses on generating leads, while more senior sales staff spend their time taking those leads through to closing.
There are a number of benefits to this approach:
Overall, the decision to split out lead generation or keep it embedded in the sales role is company specific, and depends upon how important each of the above factors is to a business. For example, if lead generation is only 10% of a sales team’s time, the cost savings benefit from splitting it out would be much less than for a team that spends 25% of its time on lead generation.
All companies, however, owe it to themselves to make a conscious decision between the two approaches (vs. just defaulting to one), as the benefits, and costs if the wrong approach is used, are too great.