What is a Lead Swamp?

by | Oct 7, 2007 | Sales Innovation | 0 comments

The Scary Swamp

I grew up in farm country in southern Illinois where I remember seeing ugly swamps and dense forests that from a distance were smelly, dank, dark, mystical, and somewhat scary.  When you get close to the swamp though, and from a clinical perspective, you realize that swamps are full of life and potential energy and are an important part of the natural lifecycle and renewal.   There is so much potential, some of the energy even glows…

The Sales and Marketing Database —  “Lead Swamp”

While many companies have spent thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of dollars to generate new leads for their business, not one company we have talked to is ever satisfied with their results.  Most sales and marketing leaders agree that less than 10% of the contacts in their sales and marketing database have ever had a sales representative engage in a discussion with the contact.

That says that 90% go uncontacted…  This is the “Lead Swamp”

Yet, when we talk to sales managers and account execs, they are all “lead starved” and while they may have a quota to dial 100-250 dials a week to build pipeline, they are getting 1 or 2 leads from marketing if they are lucky and having to identify contacts within their territory to achieve their sales targets.

Learn more about 4 ways to leverage the Lead Swamp, help sales reps double the number of qualified opportunities they create and solve the problem of the “lead starved” rep.

The Lead Swamp – Using the Sales and Marketing Database More Effectively

In financial services, enterprise software, high technology, education, and other markets we serve, our customers are spending millions of dollars to generate new leads for their sales teams.  SEO, SEM, Webinars, Seminars, Tradeshows, Surveys, PPC, and Independent Content among others are being used to identify new leads who can be qualified, nurtured and ideally converted into buying customers.  They are collecting, analyzing, and qualifying, sometimes tens of thousands of new leads a month.

Throughout our research and conversations, we always ask how many of the contacts in their Sales and Marketing database have been contact live (on the phone or in-person) by a representative from their company.  The answer is usually less than 10% and most say closer to 5%.

Marketing teams usually retort that they have contacted or “touched” the majority of the list.  What they really mean is that the contact has received an email or postcard form the company.  With email open rates in the teens and post card reply rates in the <5% category, the use and return of this database is pretty low.

Ruth Stevens, a leading missionary and thought leader of Direct Marketing, has some exceptional perspectives on the impact of marketing techniques against the sales and marketing database.  Also, she wrote an interesting article on how WarpSales is an exception to the trends of email marketing, at least in B2B.

Unleashing the Power of the Underutilized Company Asset – the Lead Swamp

Consider that only 5% or 50,000 people in a database of a million contacts has been contacted by sales people live.  And what are sales people looking for more than anything else?  Like they say from Glen Gary Glenn Ross, ” Gimme more of those leads”.

WarpSales users are tapping into those databases and providing systematic and programmatic ways to reach 40-50% of the Lead Swamp.  To be specific, WarpSales teams are engaging these contacts and having live-phone qualifying conversations with 40-50% of the lists.

These WarpSales calling programs are extremely effective and been helping to

  1. clean up the database and remove those people who are students, not involved and gave their name since they liked your give-away at a tradeshow
  2. removing contacts from reps calling lists so that they are not continuously trying to reach someone who appears to fit the ideal customer profile, but for some reason they have not been able to reach them…. for nine months…
  3. Increasing the average revenue, and therefore rep commission levels, per rep by 20-30%
  4. Balance focus on being able to call new leads as they come into sales teams.

The net result…

If you want to get a step-wise jump in productivity and average sales rep performance in a short period of time, tap into the Lead Swamp.  With an effective contact approach, you can unleash some strong energy and raise the average productivity levels of your sales teams.

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