Sales leads are everywhere, but only good ones exist once you have taken the time to profile the sales leads that you are looking for. When you take the time to ask yourself what sort of sales leads you want, and go seeking them, they will be right there in front of you.

The problem is most sales people will take all kinds of sales leads thinking their products or services can help everyone. They try to shortcut the process and in doing so waste their time and the time of those sales leads.

Sales leads need to be classified into three priorities – A for Absolutely necessary to sell, B for Beneficial to sell to and C for convenient to sell to.

It is the old Plato rule of 80/20. 80% of your revenues will come from 20% of your customers. Therefore let’s focus on the 20% of sales leads that give us 80% of the revenue and not the 80% of sales leads who gives us the 20% of revenue.

Sales people waste their time chasing C sales leads when they could be getting triple the results, with less effort, on A and B sales leads.

But how do you define an A, or B, from a C. Simple!

First define your best A type customer – determine the criteria that makes them your best customer – annual revenue, margins, profit, volume, loyalty, relationship, brand name, etc.

Then do the same for your B customers.

Now group your A customers and your B customers based on the criteria you defined above. Now take a close look at them and profile them – paint the picture of an A customer and a B customer. Map that profile over to the market place and identify you’re A and B sales leads or prospects that you would like to have has customers.

Then put a strategy together to go after your A and B sales leads. Forget the C sales leads for now, as they will come naturally once you change your focus to A and B sales leads.

The Bottom Line – A clearly defined and targeted sales lead process will give you better results in a shorter period of time, with less effort.

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