The Value of a Lead

B2B, follow-up, lead generation, life time value, Marketing, Risks, Trust

Have you analysed the time it takes for someone who enquires something that you offer and eventually buys. And what is the Life Time Value of a client.

Not all leads will buy anything at all, some will buy, but not buy from you. But those who do buy from you, do you have an estimate of the amount of time it could take at an extreme for a lead to close.

About 10 – 12 years back, there was an MNC , who was into selling CPU chips, had come to us. Their sales team had a clear mandate from their management, if a lead was not closed in 3 months, it had to be pulled out of the funnel and dropped. Like us, they were also dealing in B2B.

Since we deal in considerably large value deals, it sometimes takes us even 24 months of effort to keep the lead live, to eventually come to us.

The timeline is an important aspect in deciding when a lead needs to be stopped from being targeted. One argument is never. To a certain degree, I agree with this argument. At the other extreme is an argument that if someone doesn’t buy in 3-6 months, then they will not buy. With companies running their sales and revenue targets from one quarter to another following a lead for more than 6 months is tough, because after 6 months the sales person may change.

Generating a lead is tough enough and losing it because you have an ad-hoc timeline to decide when to dump a lead can be devastating for the business. Depending on the kind of offerings you have, the more expensive the offering, the more people take time to think through their decision because, in the B2B segment, people can’t afford to Not Have Things Work. And because they still don’t trust you or the technology, they don’t want to take a decision. That’s where all the inertia and indecision comes-up.

You need to patiently nurture leads by educating them and motivating them to try you out (if they are engaging you for the first time) by doing POCs ( if its a complex technology) and eliminate all the possible risk from the buyer.

Once you have analysed the timeline of closing leads, then they will become an asset which will I’ve you annuity kind of business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Writer’s block – why I push my brain

Affirmative action, Energy, Fear, Human Brain, Risks

I have been writing a lot about why the human brain pushes us into states of anxiety, fear etc. Fundamentally as Steven Kotler says, the brain consumes more than 25% of all the body’s energy requirements and is designed to protect you, so tries to save energy for the day when it will be needed.

If you have noticed, over the last few months I’ve tried to ensure that I write a post everyday. One is because I realized a truth in what Joe Polish says that prolific makes proficient.

Each day however when I have to write, I keep coming up with all kinds of reasons why I should not write. You would have noticed I don’t have a huge vocabulary, as a matter of fact I only use the simplest of words. Most of the times I don’t have any fundamental research data. My posts are short which goes against the grain that blog posts need to be long to be considered “read” worthy. But I still write.

I have now realized that this resistance the brain throws up, that we call a Writer’s block is another way for the brain to conserve energy. By giving this resistance, or fear about the quality of the blog post, or the lack of enough data points, the brain is trying to dissuade me from writing. If I don’t write and give up, it will feel relaxed, because it now does not need to spend energy.

By not spending energy, its meeting its primary objective of saving my life, if the need arises. So now when I have to write my post, I don’t plan in advance, because then I find all kinds of reasons why my post will be useless. I rather sit down with my tablet or computer. Scan through my brain on what I had found interesting through the events of the day and then just type.

As I start taking affirmative action and get into flow, my brain also starts sending me data to incorporate into the post and before long, I have finished the post.

If you acknowledge the fear or resistance and just start doing things, it slowly melts away. Once the brain notices that there’s no threat, it also kind of starts supporting you in the endeavor and at the end of the activity you get a feeling of achievement like I do after write a blog post.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Fear – our brain could be playing games – 4

Energy, Fear, Human Brain, Risks

Most people talk about how our brain has evolved from the reptilian brain over multiple millinea. Most other animals didn’t have the real estate in their heads to allow for their brains to grow and evolve. Human beings had the real estate and therefore we have been able to evolve. Zebras a hundred thousands years back looked exactly the same as they do today. Human beings a hundred thousand years back and now are totally different.

Now this evolution doesn’t mean that the oldest part of the human brain – the lizard brain – does not exist. It still does. As in lizards its main function is to preserve the life of the lizard. And it believes that it can do it by conserving energy. So whenever you take into a direction where it needs to expend energy, it dissuades you by giving you resistance, by throwing massive negative ideas at you to make you feel scared.

Yesterday I wrote about being fearless versus being reckless.

Being fearless does not mean an absence of fear. It means that when you see resistance, or when fear throws its head up, you realise that there could actually be something worthwhile in that direction. Its just one way for your brain to give you an indication that there’s something new, which it has not encountered before and therefore you need to take a judicious call and move forward.

Your brain is a habit forming, pattern recognition system. If it cannot see a pattern it throws up alarm bells that it will need to spend more energy to do work and therefore it should be avoided because it has to save that energy for your survival. Anytime you learn something new this is what will happen till the new becomes old.

Without being reckless, welcome the fear as a sign of progress for yourself and move forward.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Fear – our brain could be playing games – 3

Fear, Human Brain, Risks, Worry

I have written multiple posts on this topic, the last being on 14th September, because there was I time I used to be scared of so many things. Its taken me a lot of effort to reach this stage where I do take considerable amount of calculated risks.

As I have read more about the functioning of the human brain, more I have started to believe that all fear is actually created because of our brain.

Now I will like to clarify one thing being fearless and being reckless are two different things. So I am trying to become fearless day – by – day. I am not becoming reckless.

What’s the difference. An example of being reckless – If I am driving and I see a truck coming right in front of me, I won’t think its my brain playing games and go straight for the truck . Thats what deer do in the night when they see headlights. I will take evasive measures to move out of the direction of the truck.

As Seth Godin talks about in his book “Linchpin ” Trying to become fearless is not about not having fear but more about being unafraid of things that one shouldn’t be afraid of.

Our brain plays games in making us fear things, which in general we should not be fearful of. Doing a client presentation or making a phone call. Nobody is going to come and shoot you. But in case you are in front of a person who’s pointing a gun at you, then you need to be afraid, real scared. Trying to pull the gun away from her – that will be reckless.

Till next time then don’t have fear but don’t be reckless either.

Carpe Diem!!!