A long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away!) I took a sales job I was pretty sure I could "ace" — the company had good story to tell prospective customers; it was a dynamic organization filled with smart people and it was a great next step in my career — all of the ingredients I was looking for.

On the first day my new boss took me into my cubicle. There was an empty desk, a phone, a yellow pages phone book and a small stack of 3 x 5 cards. "There it is," he said. "See you at lunch and you can tell me how you're doing." (The 3x5 cards turned out to be old leads that none of the other salespeople could crack.)

I was devastated. I didn't know how or where to begin. I had the sinking feeling that I had made a huge mistake in taking the job but was too embarrassed to just walk out the door. I told myself I would "stick it out" for one month and then determine what I wanted to do. At least I'd give it a try.

I quickly made a strategy. I made a game out of the phone calls. It wasn't pretty at first; in fact I can't lie — it was extremely painful. Within a short time, however, an amazing thing happened. I started to get into the calls and began enjoying it; by the end of that first month I had a script that was working for me. Plus, I had made my first sale!


The Role of Marketing is to Create Demand for a Company's Product

That company I worked for had no marketing department. The salespeople were expected to create the demand and make the sales. That was not uncommon for the time and industry. But times have changed — dramatically.

How much prospecting your salespeople have to do should be directly correlated with how much marketing your company is doing.

Here are four marketing scenarios. Find the one which best describes your company:

1. No Marketing: Like my past employer, if you have absolutely no marketing (shame on you!) your salespeople will have to create 100% of the demand. Remember to take that into account when you set sales goals and quotas. If sales is also doing marketing and taking time to create that demand with heavy cold calling, that cuts into precious sales time. You may want to ramp up on your lead generation activities to free up your salespeople to actually sell!

2. Some Marketing: Salespeople have prospects to call, maybe from trade shows, inbound marketing, lists that have been acquired, or other sources. They make the initial sales call themselves. There may not be a constant stream of leads coming from marketing and they will have to augment their prospect base with their own prospecting (cold and "warm" calling for referrals from customers, etc.).

3. Good Marketing: One client of ours has their program of web-based inbound marketing, trade shows and inside qualification so organized that the salespeople don't even get the prospects until they have been in the "system" for six months. During that time, the prospect has received regular emails and phone calls for qualification purposes.
   
   When the salesperson eventually calls, they call a "hot" lead. (In this case, that's the perfect situation because their salespeople are highly paid and have multi-million dollar quotas. You wouldn't want them to make prospecting phone calls — not a good use of their time or your money, plus it's a real source of frustration for a highly experienced salesperson!)

4. Great Marketing: You're IBM or Accenture or Oracle. You have every airport in the US plastered with your ads; the Wall Street Journal and The Economist get the better part of your print spend. You sponsor every major sports event where you will find your prospects (Government officials, CEO's of F500 companies and their minions, etc.). You have an army of people pre-qualifying leads. The prospect practically calls you when they have a large project.

• If you're a "no marketing" company, you'll need a heavy prospector and cold-caller. You definitely don't want to hire someone who has worked for a "great marketing" company and you probably don't want to hire someone who has worked for a "good marketing" company. Look for candidates who have been in similar kinds of situations.

• If you're a "some marketing" company, it's the same as "no marketing." You want to hire a candidate who has done heavy prospecting.

• If you're a "good marketing" company, you're not as concerned about the salesperson's ability to pick up the phone to make an initial cold call. Rather, you need to be sure of their understanding of what brought the prospect to this point in the sales cycle and their ability to prospect within an account for additional business.

• If you're a "great marketing" company, you have the good fortune to focus on how the candidate would prospect inside of an account for additional business.

Some notable companies in the travel industry continue their fast growth. And, we were happy to help Trip Advisor add to their inside sales team this month.