Blaire Group CEO Kraig Kleeman recently completed his new book entitled The Must-React System. It will be available in bookstores soon. While our publisher has denied the many requests to distribute advance copies, our publisher has authorized us to share excerpts in Blaire Group newsletters and other marketing materials. Below is an excerpt from the book...

"There are two types of sales cycles: Large, complex sales that involve a minimum of multiples of hundreds of thousands of dollars and that have elapsed time cycles of multiples of months, even years. And there are transactional sales that are lower priced, and where the sales cycle is multiples of days, weeks, or sometimes even immediate. Not months or years. While helpful for all selling environments, this book emphasizes The Must-React System^SM as applied to complex, enterprise-class sales. My next book will analyze applying our methodology to transactional sales.

"Prospecting is broken. Especially for sales professionals who manage a complex sales cycles. Sales people throughout the country regardless of industry are just plain bad at devising strategies to meet new prospective customers and develop new relationships that lead to new closed business. This is especially true when the targeted buyers are senior level, C-suite executives. I don't want to get into all the reasons why some feel more comfortable milking their existing accounts. Regardless of the reason, there is a great need for sales organizations to acquire new business. If companies can't prove to Wall Street that they are acquiring new accounts and increasing their customer base they will suffer losses. It's as simple as that. And for that reason alone CEO's will yell at Sales Executives, who in turn will yell at Regional Directors, who will yell at managers, all the way down the line to you. This book is all about gaining access to your targets."

"While cold calling is one of the most important tools for prospecting, prospecting is not just about cold calling. It is a group of practices that are a part of demand creation within a company. It includes introductory messaging, cold calling, presentation delivery, e-mails, and a variety of campaigns, i.e. tradeshows, webinars, direct mailings, etc. The Must-React System^SM is a prospecting system. It is a methodology that creates meaningful activity, and it provides an entirely new approach to cold calling and e-mail campaigns. The principles of The System should be applied to all aspects of your corporate prospecting strategy to achieve maximum results.

"Every company that wants to continue growth needs their sales team to be proficient in finding and closing net-new opportunities. But, unfortunately, most sales persons are not good at gaining new business, much less performing even the most basic prospecting practices. There are a multitude of reasons for this phenomenon.

"Let's examine the large-scale problem before we dig into specifics. Prospecting is not being addressed holistically. What I mean by that is you think there are different techniques for net new customers on the one hand and new opportunities with current customers on the other. Most companies think that cold calling, e-mailing, PowerPoint presentations, and tradeshows are unrelated activities. There is disproportionate attention placed on pipeline with little attention paid to demand creation processes. In reality these are not separate areas. But they have been treated as such by a majority of companies. A holistic view of the sales pipeline incorporates demand creation into its strategy and objectives. Prospecting, of any sort, is all about creating sales opportunities or leads. Most companies do not have a clear practice of how these leads are received, qualified, approved, and managed as they develop into sales cycles.

"For many executives this information is intuitive. But, consider that Blaire Group has found, 69% of professional, B2B sales organizations fail to properly disseminate leads to field sales or partner sales organizations. This means that hard work is being done by part of your company to create demand, but it is not being developed by the appropriate groups to make sure that it bears fruit. Whether these are leads originated from tradeshows that are compiled in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system or from partners who are interested in joint activity, the delivery of leads is broken.

"We have also discovered that a majority of companies do not have a clearly defined strategy for dealing with demand creation once it is delivered to the sales group. 81% of sales management executives do not track activity metrics that are consistent with best practices. If you are a sales manager do you know if your reps have followed up on leads generated from the most recent tradeshow your company attended? Do you know how many were called? Who declined a meeting? What were the reasons? Who was never actually contacted? Why? How many contacts decided to attend next step meetings? What was their interest? Most of the companies I speak with cannot answer these simple questions about even their most important campaigns. We also know that 42% of organizations do not have adequate call management systems in place. The management of lead development is broken.

"And yet, 72% of all sales organizations are dissatisfied with both the quality and quantity of their sales pipelines. I have met very few leaders of sales organizations that feel they have an adequate pipeline developed. I repeat, prospecting is broken."

Purchase the Book

Kraig Kleeman
"The Must-React System"