Sometimes things are just not working out. You have got a great offering. You have a great story to tell. And you are getting your message in front of your target audience. But there is that big missing link. You are not getting the customers you are expecting.
You know the feeling. The webinar is packed. The demo is packed. The trade show is packed. The right people are there. So many people are interested. But not a single qualified lead emerges. One of those true anomalies. You can’t help but think:
Have they come for the right reason?
Are they asking the right questions?
Will they come back?
Why do they not want to leave their contact info for more information?
How long did they stay before they left or tuned out?
Why were they not moved by your great revelations?
So what to do? Hire a detective. That is what sales people are for. They need to put their best sleuthing skills to work. The causes of anomalies are never quite apparent. They need to get closer to prospective customers to uncover that true intent.
No doubt, it is an ideal approach that can get things on the right path. But there are just a few problems that could get in the way.
1. Not all sales people are effective sleuths. Some are great closers. Some work hard at being ultra-responsive to whatever prospective customers request. But not all have skills to uncover the insights you need.
2. There is a resource mismatch. There are many more prospective customers than salespeople. And not all prospects are alike. Hence, you may not be able to find out what you need from the prospects that are truly able to become customers.
3. The qualification process may be wrong. There may be something missing from the criteria that is being used to choose where to mine for customer insights. So the insights could be wrong.
4. There is a shield against sales people. The earlier that a prospect is in the their buying cycle, the less interested they are to invest in face time or telephone time, or any human interaction time. So the harder it becomes to discern their true intent and motivation.
So adding detective resources has a limitations on the effectiveness that can be produced. Just like with real life detectives, some mysteries are solved and some are not.
On the other hand, the more clues that are present, the higher the likelihood that the mystery will be solved. Given enough clues, we can solve a lot of mysteries with a basic level of detective skills. In today’s smartphone and video-crazed world, there always seems to be someone that is able to capture those interesting moments that make it to the top news stories.
When it comes to your demand generation system, you will make much better gains if you invest in increasing the number of clues that are collected with every touch point with your prospective customer. With enough clues, there will be no mystery in the customer behaviors that are occurring as they interact with you.
Your demand generation system must have that feedback loop built in. It must provide a data set that enables you to steer your efforts both in the right direction, and in the right manner. If not, you increase the risk of wasting precious marketing and sales resources. In today’s overcrowded market, if you don’t extract an understanding of why you are getting the results that you are, you are doomed.