tJP

It seems that the Australian Federal Government will enact a ‘do not call register for business’ after the Senate Committee recommended that the new law be passed.

I fully understand the reason why the law is needed - I once spent a month in an out-bound cold calling call centre. One of those who’s role is to sell you a loyalty card for a hotel chain, or something similar. They are absolutely a pain as they are trained to close the sale there and then. The centre was broken down to those who had spent years there and the newbies that had just been trained - who might last a week or two at most. A business does not want to receive these calls! Hence the drive for a register.

However, in its current form the register will damage business. One client already washes the residential do not call register against the calls to be made - to ensure that they comply - as many small businesses work out of a home office. This has already reduced their capabilities to make customer calls. In my opinion they have over reacted to the privacy laws and the current do not call register - as they(think) they would be hammered in the press if they did not.

Things are likely to get very grey in this area. For example,  imagine Company A has a product that will reduce the cost of building a widget by 50%.

Company A knows that Company B builds widgets and would get benefit from it. But company A cannot contact company B as they are on the DNCR. If the Production manager at Company B hears about the product and wants to know more - but leaves a switchboard number and not his mobile number - his call may not be returned as they are on the DNCR.

Consequences - Company B goes out of business? Or does Company A risk the law and push ahead and make contact?

Industries that may struggle with this include phone, banks, insurance, IT - and not the Optus, Westpac, QBE’s but the thousands of brokers/resellers who distribute their products to other small businesses.

We would all like to get off the call list of hotel loyalty cards, but we don’t want to lose our business because of it!

In Australia its deep into Q3 and Q4 is just around the corner. So is time to focus - really focus on what opportunities in your pipeline are going to close( and generate money).

I know this is your job but in my experience your pipeline is made up of the following categories of opportunities:

1. Real opportunities - the ones you have a >50% chance of winning and will bring $ this year
2. Backup opportunities - longer odds but provide you ‘coverage’ 
3. Qualified leads - but they are 6 months away before a concerted sales campaign can be exerted
4. False leads - these are the leads that you ‘accepted’ from marketing.

 I find false leads in many client pipelines, they are often called other things, like nurture list. In reality they are there for a number of reasons but should no longer be there. For example marketing badgered you into accepting before you were ready, the marketing director ( who is a friend) needed to improve their ‘accepted leads’ ratio or the ’system’ in its infinite wisdom gives you only 2 weeks before it red flags you for not making your mind up - so you accept them as its’ the route of least resistance.

 Well now its’ time to really clear out the pipeline and give them back to marketing. There are two key reasons, firstly you are thrashing around with a long list and that’s taking your eye off the main game, the few deals that will come in. Secondly, its a sunk cost, marketing made their KPI and they would be happy to work on some ‘warm and friendly’ leads going forward.

So how do you do it? Easy, look at each opportunity in the pipeline and spend 2 minutes reviewing it. Assign a number 1-4 to each and every opportunity. If you have a channel model, sit there with the partner. Even if you have a 100 opportunities and spend 200 minutes on the pipeline you will in half a day identified your focus for the next 6 months. As an output you will have two lists, those with 1 and 2 assigned stay with sales, those with 3 and 4 go back to marketing.

The key benefit is that your opportunity pipeline is clear, real, concise and focussed. Marketing can spend some time and effort on ‘real’ nurturing without treadin on toes.

Note: If you run a calendar year, do the same activity and look at real deals that will close.

“Yellow Pages Books used by 4.6m each week” according to @SteveatSensis via Twitter.

That is a really big number, we would all like 4.6m customers using our services weekly, or that much free cash in the bank(AUS dollars please).

But its  a false number - it means that around half the nations households use the book once every week. Still a good number but balanced by data such as “75% of people have not used Yellow Pages in last 12 months” ( often quoted by Tim Pethick from other sources).

So when a copy of the Yellow Pages arrived on my doorstep this week, I just recycled it(all 3 volumes that came). I use Google search and other search before I think about Yellow Pages. I only use Yellow Pages for people and businesses that do not yet have a website - tradespeople as an example.

Maybe the only people advertising in the Yellow Pages are tradespeople without a website? But there’s online Yellow Pages, so why bother printing it, because it cannot be:

• Economical to print based on usage
• Environmentally sound

So there’s the need to provide a service to people without computers which is valid, but just as likely that the trades-person who pays for his listing wants to see something tangible - and that is the printed form.