All Leads Are Equal. Or Not.

September 2, 2011

As a Canadian citizen living lawfully (with the exception of a speeding ticket here and there) in the United States since early childhood, I’ve always been fascinated with American history.   While my classmates in high school were sleeping in class or dreaming of how they could be as suave as Ferris Bueller, I was instead paying attention to what my teacher, Scott Boyer, told us about the founding fathers.  Yes, I was a geek. I marveled at the founding fathers’ prescience.  How could they have understood so much about their current environment while also almost knowing where the future would go?  One line in particular from the Declaration of Independence that struck me as both fundamental and absolute was, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”  Powerful stuff.  Especially, in the context of when it was delivered. Not to make a mockery of the Declaration of Independence, but I often apply that litmus test, the all __________ are equal, to a variety of things in life.  Because my life has lead me into a career path largely focused on sales (sorry Mom), I’ve asked myself, “Are all leads created equal?” There was a time in my life when I thought the answer was yes.  Of course, like most things I thought early in life, the answer has changed with the passage of time. Let’s face it.  We are all looking for the Glengarry leads.  The leads that are golden and true.  The leads that will result in sales so substantial we will not only go to the President’s Club, but we will be promoted, anointed as King and we will be able to hit a 3 iron out of the rough. The reality is all leads are not created equal.  There are the tradeshow leads.  You know.  The leads where someone dropped their card in a bowl under the false impression they would be “randomly” selected to win the iPad.  There are the inbound leads from a consultant who is trying to get you to send him a whitepaper so he can blatantly rip off your intellectual property, re-format it in PowerPoint and look like a genius.  There is the guy at home, Mr. Technology, who likes hitting the contact us page on your website with the end desire of having someone call him so he was someone to talk to.  And on and on.  Ug. At Revenade, we’ve found that the quality of a lead is directly proportional to the effort you put into generating it.  For instance, if you want to generate leads from your website, but you don’t implement a multi-channel campaign to drive consumers to your website, then chances are you will generate loser leads from your website.  Same with events.  Mailers.  Call campaigns.  Etc. If you want a real lead, then you need to think about what makes up a real lead.  You can bet the founding fathers didn’t just sit around saying, “Yeah, so we need to generate interest in this country, dude.  I know.  Let’s create a port in Boston, and well, let’s, you know, tell people about it.”  No.  Wrong. If you want to generate leads, you need to first understand what you are selling and why it is important, who cares about it, and what you can say/show that will help the buyer understand why your solution fulfills their needs. Then, you need to use a series of channels (direct and indirect, passive and active) to reach buyers and generate interest.  Once you’ve generated interest, you need to have people or other resources reinforce the interest, build credibility and spoon feed the buyer to the next step. Sounds simple, right? So, then why do so many people not get it?