Vendor Leads: Too Little, Too Late?
Close the gaps in the planning process and win more business

Originally published in VARBusiness, Feb. 04, 2004
Where are my leads?" Have you ever asked your vendor this question? Or how about asking a new vendor that is trying to court you as a solution provider: "What is your lead distribution like?" We all ask our vendors for leads because, quite honestly, doing so is easier than generating them ourselves. Unfortunately, what we get in return is typically not the kinds of leads we want. In fact, they can actually hurt business rather than help it.

Now, I'm not saying you can't get quality leads from your vendors. In fact, a lot of good business can come from them. What I am saying, however, is when you look at your sales cycle, you might want to reconsider not only where you get your leads from but when you get them. Most vendors will tell you they won't commit to sending out a specific number of leads or what the condition of those leads will be. They will also tell you,and justifiably so,that you as a solution provider are better off generating your own leads. That is all true. But there is a more important reason for generating your own leads: Simply, by the time a prospect goes to a vendor's Web site or responds to an ad, it's too late. Here's why.

When a prospect goes to a vendor for information about its product and "becomes a lead," oftentimes that customer is already too far down the decision path to become a viable lead you can follow. The end user has already been through its internal strategic planning and needs analysis. That means you've missed the opportunity to work with the prospect on forming its concepts as to what needs to be fixed, avoided, added or changed. At this point, the prospect is now looking for the best price or value for its dollar; you are chasing a deal and being reactive. The takeaway? Become part of the planning stage, not the product-evaluation stage.

In fact, the more complex the solution and the less of a commodity the product is you're selling, the more true that is. A company that needs a sophisticated accounting system, for example, has already been through numerous internal meetings about its needs and requirements. When it believes it has identified its plan of attack, it then goes to various vendors to compare features and prices. And, unfortunately, it's at that late stage you get the lead from the vendor.

So I ask you: Who is in control at this point? Certainly not you. You end up responding to RFPs that are already biased and skewed. You run around chasing answers to questions for which you have no idea where they will lead. You start including extra features at no extra cost and/or discounting your product without even knowing what value your solution has to the client. And all that because you've simply positioned yourself as a reactive order-taker. Jump, puppet boy! Jump!

By now it should be clear how the process of getting leads from your vendor puts the customer in control instead of you. Even worse, it drags out the sales cycle, and you end up "losing slowly." A quick win is one in which you are in control from the beginning while working with the client to define its problems, needs and potential solutions. When it is time to make a purchase decision, it is much more straightforward and quick.

As a solution provider, you must be proactive. You, yourself, must enter the sales cycle at the beginning of a prospect's planning process and strategic discussions, identify the company's needs along with it, and become a trusted partner during the entire process. Determine the target accounts to go after and market to them. That will allow you to generate your own leads in the early stages. And as you begin working with these prospects, make sure you adhere to a structured sales process so as to follow a set pattern of best practices that work,each step being a consistent, proven process that will lead you from beginning to end, with you in control.