Lead with Value and Don't Use a Screwdriver to Pound a Nail

Oliver Lopez is founder and CEO of Struct Sales, a sales consultancy firm that works with large B2B sales and marketing teams selling complex products and services over long sale cycles. Typical clients of his company have tried and failed at inbound marketing. They may come to Struct Sales thinking they know what they need as a solution. Often, they're trying to solve the wrong problem.

Inbound marketing fails when sales reps see little chance of converting what are, at best, lukewarm leads, send the leads back to marketing, deign the inbound effort a failure, and continue only to work with existing customers. Sales reps can be further discouraged when complicated incentive plans fail to communicate the actions needed to earn "rewards."

Oliver discussed some of the causes of low lead quality: 1) a failure to define and effectively target the ideal customer; 2) poorly defined/unquantified: goals, hand-off processes, and interfaces among marketing, sales, and delivery; and 3) a "language barrier" between sales and marketing.

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are not necessarily Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). Struct Sales offers a combination Sale Development Representative (SDR)/Business Development Representative (BDR) to generate qualified prospects through cold email, cold calling, social selling, and networking; qualify these prospects; and set up sales-qualified appointments. Oliver notes that statistics show that it takes between 8 to 13 "touches" to actually get a potential client on the phone. Yes, concentrate on the phone, but try a lot of different channels as well, and, as soon as possible, customize your messages.

Oliver spoke at HubSpot's Inbound 2019 in Boston, MA on Challenge/Change/Control: Turning Prospects into Revenue by Using Emotions. Good sales professionals need to have good marketing skills, lead with value, utilize storytelling, "touch" the potential client where they are, and make their clients "feel something." Oliver feels that it is critical to always add value before you push your product, present an ROI calculation quantifying the value your company's products or services can add to a client's bottom line, and to present a "What if/dire consequences" scenario for failure to take action.

Oliver can be reached on Twitter @oliverlopez, on Linked in, on his company's website at structsales.se, and on his blog at oliverlopez.se (in English).