| A fishbowl filled with business cards is what most | | | | The worst potential customer was a lowly admissions |
| companies bring home from trade shows. The sales | | | | counselor at a very large, public college no matter |
| people may go fishing in the fish bowl to find a | | | | where they were. |
| recognizable name or two, but for the most part the | | | | So, the attributes that were important were: |
| business cards are worthless. They are worthless | | | | - Title of contact |
| because they have no meaning. How do you value | | | | - Tax status of the school (public or private) |
| one business card over the other? If you have 100 | | | | - Location of the school |
| business cards should you call every one? If you are | | | | - Size of the student body |
| a busy sales person chances are about 100% that | | | | - Their use of the Internet for recruiting |
| you have better things to do than cold call names | | | | With these five simple attributes I could assign a |
| from a fishbowl. | | | | score to each lead and rank order it. When I was at |
| What salespeople want are qualified leads. A qualified | | | | this company we staffed our booth with Trade |
| lead generally means that the lead represents a real | | | | Show Samurais and brought back literally thousands |
| sales opportunity. The lead shows interest, has | | | | of lead cards per year—far too many to handle |
| money, is ready to buy, etc. However, in order for a | | | | with our small sales force. It was no problem, we |
| lead to be qualified it first has to be qualifiable. A | | | | simply rank-ordered them and gave our top potential |
| qualifiable lead is the essential ingredient for a lead. It | | | | leads to the team. The others we included as part of |
| is the 5-10 attributes that will allow you to rank-order | | | | our lead-nurturing program and called them when |
| the lead in terms of potential sales opportunity. | | | | they showed interest. |
| I used to work in the college admissions industry. We | | | | The difference between a business card and a highly |
| sold lead-generation services to colleges. The best | | | | qualified lead is the qualifiable information you collect. |
| potential customer was the dean of admissions at a | | | | With it you have a sales feast for the sales team, |
| mid-size, private liberal-arts college in the Midwest | | | | without it you have fish food. |
| that already used the Internet for recruiting students. | | | | |