The way your salespeople regard the need for cleaning leads can really reflect in their success. The worst kind of treatment they can give is to disregard them completely and take actions without any foresight from the information these leads provide.
As you well now, these cleaning leads represent opportunities, the same opportunities that salespeople look for when getting people to employ your commercial cleaning services. However, there’s also more to them than that. Despite what they say, it’s not always enough to have a number, an email address, and a few names.
In fact, Geoffrey James of Inc.com published a column titled 5 Bad Sales Habits to Avoid with the top two being very strong reasons why your salespeople should take generated leads a lot more seriously:
“1. Playing the Lone Wolf”
“The sales rep hides the size of the opportunity (or even the opportunity itself) from the rest of the organization and try to develop it alone, hoping that he’ll get all the credit if it closes (but no guff if it doesn’t). Unfortunately, if the deal does move forward, there’s no support from the rest of the team for making it happen.”
The support isn’t just limited to the salesperson’s own team but also from other areas, including marketing. For example, your commercial cleaning leads could also include more specific information about the cleanliness of a prospect’s work place. The commercial cleaning business can cover a wide area of different services after all. If your salespeople can learn of any mores specific problems beforehand, then they’ll get a better idea on what to offer.
“2. Overscheduling”
”The sales rep stuffs her pipeline with so many complex deals that she’s hard-pressed to keep them straight. She’s hedging her bets, because she’s sure at least some of the deals will close. However, she’s also putting your firm’s reputation at risk: What if all those deals close and your firm ends up with more projects than it can possible handle?”
Generating leads commonly implies appointment setting as well. That’s why it’s important to have lead generators who can advise your sales team when scheduling meetings with prospects as well as keeping in mind your company’s own timetable.
Sadly, much like janitors and work place cleanliness, leads are one of the things salespeople continue to take for granted. They don’t realize that the whole ‘lone wolf’ act isn’t the path to an entire business’ success. Another Inc.com contributor, Margaret Heffernan, elaborates on this attitude quite well in this other article and says that even the great leaders of other large companies wouldn’t have succeeded without the help of often unmentioned parties:
“We all know, if we take the time to think about it, that none of these people accomplished anything alone. Each needed moral support from friends and families, financial support from investors and backers, technical support from engineers, scientists, and accountants, and honest feedback from those brave enough to proffer it.”
Now what about your salespeople, have they took the time to think about this in the same way? Perhaps it’s about time to ask them yourself and remind them why they need to take your cleaning leads more seriously.