Imagine your car is missing a wheel. Could it still get you where you wanted to go? Eventually, maybe—but it would be an extremely painful journey, right?
Now imagine that your sales operation is missing a critical function—that an entire process or capability just doesn’t exist in your business. Might that explain why sales performance isn’t where you’d like it to be? Could that be the reason it’s so damned hard to get where you want to go?
I started pondering these questions after reading a book entitled, The Truth About Leads by Dan McDade. And when I recently interviewed Dan for the SellingBrew Playbook — Trade Secrets of Effective Lead Generation —- my thoughts coalesced and I came to an uncomfortable conclusion:
Many B2B companies struggle with lead generation because they’re lacking a true prospect development function. It’s like they’re trying to put together a puzzle without having all of the pieces.
In the book and interview, Dan identifies the root-causes behind so many of the lead-gen and prospecting “challenges” we’ve all experienced. And he does a great job of explaining what real prospect development looks like—how it works, who does what, and when.
And once that picture was painted for me, I realized that I’ve never in my entire career as a practitioner and consultant worked with a B2B company that had a real prospect development capability. Marketing? Sure. Inside Sales? Yup. Sales Ops? Check. Marketing automation? You betcha.
But even with these groups and toolsets, true prospect development just wasn’t happening—at least not in the consistent, methodical, and effective way that I now know is possible.
So…if you’re wondering if your lead generation and prospecting processes are as effective as they really could be, I encourage you to check out Dan’s interview and book. And while I could be wrong, I’d be willing to bet at least a brew or two that your lead generation puzzle is missing a piece, too—a really big piece.
