In Which I Despair Over Yada-Yada Statements

I do write about business and marketing once in a while, since well… that’s my profession, and I find it interesting.  This post from the B2B Lead Generation Blog caught my eye for some reason.  The author then writes the following:

I’ve summarized Kevin’s three points:

1. Don’t be too Web myopic. Don’t focus exclusively on Web-based leads because typically in a b-to-b environment, a prospect may choose to communicate with your company by telephone or some other channel.
2. All leads are not created equal. This is true offline and online. Don’t oversimplify. Qualify the leads first.
3. The velocity of inquiry follow-up matters. Your response time say’s more about you then you realize. If your competition takes 24 hours to respond and it takes you days to respond, you’re in big trouble. And don’t just send a canned response either.

To which I say, “Easy for you to say, buster!”

No, actually, I completely agree with Brian Carroll, the blogger at B2B Lead Generation.  The thing is, that third point is what I will call the Yada Yada Statement.

By that I mean it’s the kind of statement that blithely sweeps all manner of difficulty and complications under its smooth exterior.  Why yes, velocity of inquiry follow-up matters, but then the question is, “How do I respond more quickly?”

Total aside, that reminds me of a signature file I saw on a forum recently that went like this:

How to Get Rich:

1.  Paint pants blue.

3.  Collect money.

That missing step 2 is kind of a killer, isn’t it?

I find that business plans generally and marketing plans more specifically are often comprised of these Yada Yada statements.  We get these grand statements of purpose like, “We will leverage our brand strength to dominate the marketplace!“  Umm, yeah, okay.  Run that by me again, but slowly, and explaining the steps one by one?

In order to have velocity of inquiry response, you need to set up an infrastructure that is capable of rapid response.  What might such an infrastructure look like?

At a minimum, we’re talking about lead tracking and management, which includes all of the business rules of lead assignment (which salesperson should get the lead?), lead followup and management thereof (who follows up with the salesperson to see if the lead was followed up on?), effective metrics (how late is too late?), and incentives and disincentives to enforce the business rules.

Usually, this also will require a serious examination of the organizational structure.  Does your head of Sales report to the CMO?  To the SVP of Sales & Marketing?  Or is Marketing in one silo and Sales in another?  Who controls the website?  Who manages the lead distribution system?  Who sets the business rules?  Are there personality conflicts between the executives involved?

This becomes magnitudes more difficult if you have any sort of a distributed sales force with people in the field.

I’m obviously not going to solve the problem of how to accelerate response to inquiries here.  In fact, I’m not solving anything at all.  I am merely despairing at the overabundance of yada-yada statements in business writing in general.

-TS