Why 50% Of Your Sales Team Don't Use Their Leads & Why You Should Care. Now, More Than Ever...

Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash

I've spent nearly 30 years promoting the use of services that provide qualified project leads and market intelligence for professionals who work in construction. Yes I did say 30 years and that I think gives me a certain amount of experience of knowing what you sales team think of what I have been providing....

Cards on the table, I'm a Barbour ABI man always have been (well apart from when I was an ABI Building Data Man but that was a long time ago) and always will be. I'm currently back there working as a consultant with their parent business, Info Pro Digital, actually the largest group in Europe providing this kind of data, well worth checking out if you have ambitions overseas. I'm being afforded the time and resource to do some real client research, the type you can never do when you have a day job - guess what, most of what I thought was right...is!

So here's the headlines, BD teams by and large are fairly indifferent to "sales leads" and sorry Barbour ABI and Glenigan its true for you both. The main reasons are they are "too busy", there is "too much to go through", and there is in some places a general mistrust of the data validity. Some of these points individually are true, some are red herrings and some are based on assumption/past experience, oh and of course a deep seated hatred of "cold calling". It's obvious when you look at your usage among your team that this issue is real.

Take a typical business development team for a product manufacturer with a good sales structure/management team in place, if you have more than 30% of your team regularly engaging and using the information, whoever the supplier, you are doing well, the remainder of the team is usually split between the occasional user and the ones that logged in for training and never have done since! In my experience this can be north of 30% of your team.

So, at least 30% and probably closer to 50% given our occasional users, of your team haven't bought in to your vision or that of the MD or the Marketing Director or the Sales Director, whoever decided this was a good idea. Do you have a team of sales superstars that require no support and have a laser like view of their market and opportunities, to be fair in some cases yes you will, but is it really 50% - 70% of your team? Let's start with you first, as a sales leader, do you believe in it, do you prioritize its use, is it part of a target or bonus incentive within the business, how are you measuring success? If that is a "yes" that is a great start , if no, we can start changing things, its not too late, so before you start not cancelling next years subscription or or taking user licences away lets have a think about how in the real world this data could help you steer through the rockiest of times...

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

All our jobs are going to get more difficult in the next 12 months, if your business development reps being "too busy" means they can hit targets just from repeat and existing clients then in the starkest of terms you are unlikely to grow. In the year to September 2022, 3,953 construction firms went out of business in the UK, which is the highest number since the financial crisis, its expected this may even hit 6,000 over the course of the next 12 months, 59% of the 3,953 construction firms that went out of business in the year to September were specialist contractors, these are by and large the companies you and your merchant partners sell to, some of your customers have disappeared in the last 12 months and this is before recession really hits. If you do not anticipate and prospect for new clients, my suggestion is you will not grow as a business in real terms.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TODAY TO TEST YOUR TEAM AND

YOUR CURRENT PREPARATIONS FOR A RECESSION?

League tables split by role, sector and region

• Ask your team to send you a list of their ten biggest customers or potential customers for their region.

This is a really interesting way to gauge understanding but also to use a tool like Barbour ABI to become part of your business process, you can customize the League Tables on the ABI project platform to give you an independent and validated 3rd party view of who is most active as a contractor or subcontractor or an architect in their sector or region. Match the lists, any missing that appear in the ABI list and not yours? Target your team to establish relationships with that whole ABI top 10 over the course of the next quarter, the business will be glad of it. It will also ensure that all users engage...

Current Product Specification

How many active projects do you and your team know you are specified on at present?

I believe that this more suitable for Barbour ABI users based on project volumes, they are researching thousands of product specifications at a brand level like your or your competitors, example opposite! Everyone must have enough time to follow up these quick wins and potential specification substitutes. You could even use it as the only search you do.

Get your team into the habit of communicating with your suppliers researchers.

Contact the research team ask for updates, the telephone symbol means the info was collected on a conversation

If something doesn't look right then ask your suppliers research team to qualify and confirm it, projects are organic living things, contacts and details change, again I know Barbour ABI have the support in place for you to access their research team directly here in the UK, let them become part of your wider team, you are paying for it so treat them as an extension of your business. 1.1 million phone calls per year and the fact that 95% of all their data such as start and end dates has been gathered from a person to person conversation takes away an element of mistrust that modeled data can give.

The reality is that potentially 50% of your subscription based on users is potentially being wasted, we allow these situation to happen, simple steps can bring this data to life in your business and give you the best chance possible of being in the best shape you can for this period of uncertainty. The work I'm doing with Info Pro tells me if I have just described your business, don't worry, you are not alone and secondly, it can be fixed. Make sure you have a supplier like Barbour ABI who are actively aware of these situations and can give guidance and support. Try these initial steps see if it helps uncover a need in the business and a quick win for everyone.

If you want to know more about I can help you as a business, reach out. Keen to hear your thoughts...

Simon