Professionals in lead generation do not agree on the role of lead developers in making sales calls to prospects. Let’s look at both sides of the question.
Why Not Include Lead Development on Sales Calls?
This may seem like a logical thing to do. But it is still not a practice in many firms to include lead development representatives in sales calls, even when they are involved with outbound prospecting.
So what are the fears, concerns or objections to having lead development along when making these calls?
- They may interfere with the meeting
- The sales representative does not know how to explain lead development’s presence
- The prospect or customer is not open to having additional representatives attend the meeting
- Lead development may say something they shouldn’t during the meeting and mess up the deal
- Lead development may say nothing — so they don’t have anything to contribute
This list could go on. On the other hand, there is definitely good cause to include lead development in prospect and customer sales calls. This is especially true if their job involves outbound prospecting.
Why Include Lead Development on Sales Calls?
Here are 3 reasons why including those on your outbound prospecting team may help build your pipeline.
1) It builds team spirit. Collaboration is in. Sharing and caring results in greater success for all.
2) Lead Development can learn something. Everyone has a different style, different ideas, different experiences, ideas that work, and ideas that don’t. The goal is the same whether you are outbound prospecting or closing a deal: to generate a lead that results in a sale. Ask yourself: does it make sense to have your lead development representatives observe a sales call? This is educational and improves their ability to generate leads, which in turn helps the sales representative build a pipeline and close sales.
2) It strengthens the sales representatives knowledge of the prospect or customer.
Lead development and sales representatives are usually paired to work together on accounts. For example, a lead development representative may be assigned certain accounts for a sales representative, to do outbound prospecting. Couldn’t this provide valuable information before the call — or insight after the call — that will prove useful to the sale?
I believe that having those who develop leads attend sales calls is an asset to the sales team. What are your thoughts?