You Are Likely Wasting Money on a Lead Gen Team If…

…your sales cycles are less than 30 days, and can be closed over the phones. 

Think about it: If your sales cycle is less than a month long, it is NOT a complex sale and has presumably a lower ASP (average sales price). You don’t need to be paying people on a separate lead gen team to be prospecting only to pass along the opportunity to your sales reps to close.

For a smaller deal, that handoff process between the two teams will completely overcomplicate things and turn prospects off. Not to mention, the cost benefit analysis doesn’t usually add up.

For the less-complex sale, we often recommend to our portfolio companies that sales reps do their own prospecting, pipeline management, and closing. Balancing your day/week between prospecting and working deals in your pipeline to close will OBVIOUSLY require reps who are incredibly diligent and have excellent time management skills. It’s not always easy. However, it can be done.

An outbound calling role that I’m NOT opposed to for sales organization with a shorter sales cycle is someone who is focused on building brand awareness. So what might this include? An example might be calling prospects to drive attendance and promote upcoming events and webinars. This person would probably fall under marketing rather than sales. But this is ALSO someone who could be handling inbound leads, particularly if your inbound flow is great and your filters are not as strict.

Based on your experience, is 30 days a realistic cut-off for NOT hiring an outbound prospecting lead gen team?

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lead generation sales