This is part of a continuing series on my podcast interview of Jim Burns, CEO of Avitage.  In this question, I asked Jim how he might deal with a CEO who insists on having his salespeople “dial for dollars” with what I term “naked cold-calling.”  You should also check out Avitage’s new website, Think Like a Publisher.

JO: You talk about pounding the phones, Jim.   To me, pounding the phone is like a blind squirrel looking for a nut.  It’s not that the squirrel never finds a nut.  They find some periodically, but it’s not a reliable process.  And you have one very hungry squirrel.

Jim, if you sat down with a CEO of a business, and he’s got a let’s say, a $150 million software business and his website is the traditional Product, Services, Clients — just another boring B2B website.  He’s got salespeople pounding the phones.

What do you say to something like that to people today?  How can you convey the idea that there’s a new approach, that it’s cost effective, that it’s a must-have, and that it’s the right way to do things.  How could you get that message across, Jim?

JB:          Well, I always start with the outcomes that are desired, both on the sales side and you mentioned Jim Dickie.  He and the work that he’s done is eloquent around quota levels and levels of productivity of salespeople.  We always hear people talking about return on investment.

I love to talk to CEOs and vice presidents of sales on the return on investment of their sales organization.  And if 50% or 60% of them are heading quota, if 30% are missing quota in a significant way, what kind of return are they getting on those very expensive assets and what is the opportunity cost of that not happening?  And then you look at, OK, so those are the outcomes that you’re getting, what are the outcomes that you’re after?  There’s a gap there, that’s what’s at stake.

Now, what are the strategies and the investments that you’re making to fill those gaps, to remedy that situation?  And what do you see and expect from marketing to help them to do that?  And of course, the big area over the last ten years has been lead generation and now marketing has come I think appropriately to realize that it’s not about generating leads or what I would call a contact, but rather, getting those leads to the point where they’re qualified enough for the sales people to be working with them.

So Jim Dickie also says, you know, what if you could takes sales productivity up 10%?  Well, you know, if they’re spending 30% of the time just banging the phones and you can take that productivity increase to 10% or even higher — because if they’re working with qualified opportunities, it’s gone a long way.  It doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, but I think that is really a huge difference.

So how is marketing generating and cultivating leads through a sales ready status.  That’s the key, and usually the conversation ends right there because most people aren’t doing that very well.

And then the question is if you were going to do that would that impact the business outcomes that you’re looking to do and now let’s talk about a way to go make that happen. (to be continued)

Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers, a company dedicated to helping other companies find and acquire new customers using best practices in lead generation.  He’s also the author of the famed white paper, How to Find New Customers.