Posted by Kevin Lofgren.

We do a lot of things for our clients, but when it comes to our Lead Machine work, I sometimes feel like we're accidentally lumped into a generic category of "lead generators," which is only partly true. But it's not the whole picture by a long shot. The Lead Machine is a hybrid of technology and services that leverages both of those things in order to score and categorize each prospect into one of the following four categories:

• Not Interested, Not Qualified
• Interested, Qualified
• Interested, Not Qualified
• Not Interested, Qualified

Most sales people are looking for the lowest-hanging fruit. That's only natural. We want to focus on people who want to talk to us. That means that any prospect who isn't raising his hand, isn't being addressed as often as those that are. So, because of that, this is how those four categories break down:

Not Interested, Not Qualified
These people are generally not a problem, because they aren't showing interest. Sales people don't instinctively chase these folks. These people filter themselves out naturally.

Interested, Qualified
These people are pretty easily identified by almost any kind of marketing effort because they know they need it and they are making you aware of that fact. Farstar's work will obviously identify these people, but that's not really the juice.

Interested, Not Qualified
Now we're starting to get to the important stuff. These people are serious time and money wasters because a lot of sales people are going to mistake an "expression of interest" with "qualified." If they aren't qualified, those sales folks are wasting their time. If our clients could quantify the number of dollars wasted on this category (before Farstar comes along), I have a feeling it would sicken them.

Not Interested, Qualified
These people are the most valuable to you, and where we add the most value in our results. If they aren't showing interest in your offering, they're probably not showing interest in your competitors' offering. Because if they're qualified and not showing interest, they probably don't know they're qualified - and certainly don't know they should be interested. Therefore, it stands to reason that they aren't in sales conversations with your sales people or your competitors. So if you're sales team knows about them, they have the edge. This is the typical reason our clients come to us initially. And it usually is manifested the same way: "If I can sit down with someone and explain what we do, I close 50% or more of them. But I need to be sitting down with more of them."

A lot of people ask me, "so, with your Lead Machine, are you guys going to find people who want to talk to us?" And the answer is "sure."

But more importantly, we're going to find people who didn't know they wanted to talk to you, and will.

kl