If your sales teams are going to become fearless competitors, they must be able to engage prospective clients. so let’s look at a problem that vexes many sales teams — the inability to develop quality leads.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this message:

• Prospects are stupid (CEO of a PPC firm)
• We fired our entire sales force and experienced no drop in revenue (That same CEO)
• A rant by another SEO firm (below)

Here’s what that SEO wrote:

On numerous occasions, especially over the last six months, I have spoken with prospective clients about what we see today in their campaigns.  Most often, this is conducted with access to their Google account and all conversion data.  We point out instances of what I would classify as gross mismanagement of the search campaigns and ultimately, they say they are sticking with their current vendor.

I have gone through this over and over again in my head and the most logical reasons I can come up with can be classified as complacent, jaded or nearsighted.

Complacent: Search works for almost everyone.  It typically outperforms most other channels and is considered a rock star  among marketing mediums.  So if your goals are being met, is the thought that you don’t want to rock the boat? Or are the opportunities being presented beyond belief and/or comprehension?

Jaded: Does your workload exceed bandwidth?  You would normally have interest, but you are just burn-out and the mere idea of entertaining vendor proposals only sounds like additional work.

Nearsighted: Does it seem like the long-term outlook is too far removed from the short-term investment of time?  Is the cost benefit not there?

What is fascinating about this is the response from one of their customers.  Click More to read his response:
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