Closing Keynoter Mac McIntosh’s Wish Lists for B2B Marketing and Sales, Part Two

May 26th, 2006

At NEDMA ’06, It’s a Brave New World, the New England Direct Marketing Association’s Conference and Exposition, M. H. “Mac” McIntosh — described by many as one of America’s leading business-to-business sales and marketing consultants and an expert on the subject of sales leads — will be delivering the closing keynote (June 15, 4:30-5:30 PM), entitled “How to Get Your CEO, CFO, the Folks in Sales, Your Agency and Your Client to Buy Into Your Marketing Plan.”

Mac is president of Mac McIntosh Incorporated, a sales and marketing consulting firm specializing in helping companies get more high-quality sales leads and turn them into sales. For more information about his firm, or to request a free subscription to his newsletter, Sales Lead Report®, please click here.

Yesterday, here in this space, Mac was kind enough to share with us just a few of his many wishes for B2B marketing pros. Today, he’s going to do the same, only for those on the sales side of the equation.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mac McIntosh…

•I wish sales management would design compensation programs that reward salespeople for all behaviors that contribute to the success of the company. Commissions are important, but how about also rewarding salespeople for “closed-loop” feedback on sales leads, more accurate forecasts, adding names and information to the sales and marketing database, and other tasks important to the company’s ongoing success? Then, maybe salespeople would invest more time and effort towards these important tasks.

•I wish more sales managers would insist that the company’s marketers accompany salespeople on at least one sales call per month, so they better understand what the salesperson is up against and what sales tools are really needed.

•I wish salespeople would quit complaining about marketing and, instead, try to help the company’s marketers understand how they can assist sales in finding qualified sales opportunities, demonstrating product or service advantages, proposing and closing sales.

•I wish salespeople would stop ignoring qualified sales leads generated by marketing programs. (Notice I said “qualified sales leads.” I don’t think salespeople should follow up on every inquiry or website visitor; only those that have been pre-qualified.) Their company spent thousands of dollars generating and qualifying sales leads, and if salespeople don’t contact these prospective customers, they will go elsewhere to buy.

•I wish salespeople would take the time to report back on the results of the sales leads they are provided from marketing. Their feedback would allow the folks in marketing to better target their future lead generation programs, eliminating the efforts that don’t work and concentrating marketing efforts where they will produce more of the high-quality leads salespeople want.

Note from Mac McIntosh: Giving credit where credit is due, not all the items above were my ideas. I enlisted the aid of a small group of business-to-business sales and marketing professionals who subscribe to Sales Lead Report®. They include Peter Altschuler, Bob Derr, Tracy Emerick, Dianna Huff, Mike Wallen and Kristin Zhivago.

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