Good CRM will not overcome bad salesmanship

Don’t call me and don’t email me. I’m not sure I can say that any clearer. I’m a fan of CRM systems and we know the ROI they deliver. Increasing the productivity of sales and marketing employees along with integrated customer service can deliver tremendous value for the customer, but there’s one CRM trend that is simply annoying.

There’s been a rapid growth in solutions that track visitors to your website to automatically generate leads. Yes, sales leads are important, but a steady stream of random visitors automatically turned into leads in your CRM system based on some criteria does not make for a high-value opportunity for your junior sales staff. Worse, the poor quality of these leads means the sales staff is unlikely to deliver a glowing first touch. I just experienced that.

Umm… Salesforce?

One of our analysts spent a few minutes on the Salesforce site gathering information before a morning conference call. Within hours, a Salesforce sales rep called to inquire about our interest and learn more about our company (don’t hide NetSuite… you’re just as guilty, and why are you laughing HubSpot?). Not only didn’t she take 60 seconds to look at our website before the call, but the clearly hollow attempt at a pitch left me wondering what boiler room facility she was interned in. Now don’t get me wrong, she was pleasant enough, but it was clear that “no” was a more common response than “yes” to her scripted outreach.

If you are going to automate lead generation, take a few moments to consider and properly tune the filtering. When it comes to generating ROI, quantity is not a substitute for quality.