A major concern of the directors of companies selling products through consultative selling is the detection and generation of qualified business opportunities, also called leads.

If you are the Sales Executive of a company, chances are that you will spend more time trying to find sale opportunities that are only waiting to be closed. You surely have a lot of pressure from the Sales Department about closing deals and you are being measured on the basis of those sales that translate into instant income for your company. As a result, Sales leads that turn into sales are more important to you. Given that your time is money, you go for quality and not for quantity when it comes to Sales leads. They become even more important for companies that realize how rare and costly their Commercial Sales Executives really are.

Does the Marketing Department give your Sales Department qualified Leads? If you are responsible for marketing, are you really delivering quality sales leads to the sales department or are you just giving the information of customers who called for more assistance? There is a big difference. A query is done by someone who is concerned about requesting information and needs some assistance. But a sales lead is not a sale until it has been described.

If customers asking for information are sent to interested sales team without qualification, many of them will not be ready for the business executives trying to close a business. And this time is lost trying to close that sale.

More than one sales person ends up distrusting marketing people due to their lack of training and skills when it comes to selecting quality sales leads. Failing to make this connection between Marketing and Sales departments is one of the most expensive and biggest mistakes a company can make.

Not always best is more. Frequently Marketing Managers mistake quality with quantity sales leads. They think the key to closing sales is having many leads. This is can turn out to be awfully wrong, and end up costing your company. In order to change this, your company must make it its mission to improve the management and selection of high quality sales leads. That is in itself the secret for success.