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Nice post today on the Pipeliner CRM blog from that smart man Dan McDade of Pointclear about how you should not buy into the proposition that waiting for your prospects is the right sales strategy.
I agree. We’ve overcooked the concept of “inbound marketing” if we’ve convinced sales people to rely on their marketing group to “catch leads in a big net” and deliver them to the sales people. The idea that sales people are helpless to go outbound and speak to prospects is very dangerous to your business.
You need to go out and talk to your market early. It’s fine to be too early. You need to build a relationship and that takes a bunch of time. When the time is right and a need is there you will be super glad you were “too early.”
Here’s the post:
Do you believe that a large percentage of the buying process is complete before sales needs to get involved (57%, 65%, 67% or even more?)
If so, you can thank Doug Davidoff, CEB, Dan Pink, and several analyst quoted in this LinkedIn article published in early 2015.
Mr. Davidoff states:
The initial research comes from 2011 Corporate Executive Board (CEB) study of 1,400 B2B purchases that found 57% of the typical purchase is made before a customer talks to a supplier. In 2013 CEB updated the research and found that the number shifted to 65%.