What Does a Qualified Lead Look Like?

I’m not sure if this is one of those topics that make people’s blood boil, or not. However, I’ve noticed a huge disparity between what extremely pragmatic marketing & sales consultants will tell you and what otherwise intelligent practitioners actually do (yes, pragmatism wins every time). There are reasons for this disparity but let’s just get it out there first and see what everyone thinks before we start trying to determine root causes, and potential cures.

Selling systems in many companies are just plain broken; if they exist at all. Look at nothing other than lack of sustained growth or the high turnover rates of CMO and CSO types. The end result of what I like to call personality-based selling is that we emphasize what we can’t really manage…highly variable and unpredictable personalities. It seems that many companies try to hire a bunch of rock stars, but the simple fact is that only half of them can be above average. They never seem to do what we expect; only what we inspect. W…