See Part II

The remainder of this series will examine marketing research strategy and investment in information resources by comparing the concept of the "qualified lead" with the various sources of sales data available to staff.  The approach is laid out in the table below.


In the course of any sales cycle, the function of market research is providing sales staff with a stream of “ready, willing and able” buyers; or as close thereto as possible. The job of sales is to take those leads, along with any others they might identify on their own, close the gap in information, focus on the likely buyers and take the actions necessary to close deals.

The marketing manager’s objective should be to use research to maximize the time spent by sales staff on closing. First, when spread across the total number of new contracts, sales activities are far more expensive than research activities. Second, there is a high “opportunity cost” when sales staff are researching or, worse still - waiting for - leads instead of trying to close deals. Third, specialization yields higher quality capacity - solid research and sales skills are very different, hard enough to find on their own; and rarely combined in one person.

To understand how to maximize overall new sales within any given marketing and sales budget, or where to spend “the next dollar” added to any budget, it is useful to parse the “qualified lead” concept and the practical dividing line between research and sales activities.

“Ready, willing, and able buyers”:

• Are prepared to make a purchase now (ready);
• Know they need the type of product or service offered by the firm in question (willing); and
• Have a clearly identified source of funds to make the purchase (able).

Requests for Proposals (RFP) for product or service contracts come closest to this ideal.

The total cost of finding and responding to any RFP is almost always less than the cost of pursuing any other lead. As noted in Part II, RFP reporting services are incredibly cheap relative to the expected value of the leads they generate and to the “do it yourself” cost. Once a provider has responded to several RFPs, it should have on hand the “boilerplate” required to identify itself to any agency issuing RFP's; the information required to cut, paste an edit a draft response to substantive questions; and a spreadsheet model to determine costs. Given the low potential cost of responding to RFPs, the high average value of most firms’ first sale to any new client, and the even higher value of subsequent sales, automating this process should be a priority for even the smallest provider’s marketing manager.

Many firms do not devote resources to the process because they believe that higher value RFPs are often rigged in some way to favor a predetermined provider. On net, this is a mistake. RFPs are just another input to every firm’s experience with the ratio of qualified leads to closed sales. The percentage of fixed RFPs is not known but, even if 50%, the field is no less worthy of attention than any other kind of lead subject to “random” losses. Giving up on RFPs, or guessing which are rigged, only deprives the firm of legitimate sales opportunities that are the lowest cost to pursue. Moreover, whatever the percentage, change will only come when providers respond, lose, protest and involve the media. If some RFPs are fixed, they provide all the more reason for providers to come as close as possible to automating the response process.     

Next: Parsing Funding Release Announcements