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The Missing Link in Your Marketing Operation

Imagine your car is missing a wheel. Could it still get you where you wanted to go? Eventually, maybe—but it would be an extremely painful journey, right?

Now imagine that your marketing operation is missing a critical function—that an entire process or capability just doesn’t exist in your business. Might that explain why performance levels aren’t where you’d like them to be? Could that be the reason it’s so damned hard to get where you want to go?

I started pondering these questions after reading a book entitled, The Truth About Leads, by Dan McDade. And when I interviewed Dan for the Marketing Ops Journal, my thoughts coalesced and I came to an uncomfortable conclusion:

Many B2B companies struggle with lead generation because they’re lacking a true prospect development function. It’s like they’re trying to put together a puzzle without having all of the pieces!

In the book and interview, Dan identifies the root-causes behind so many of the lead generation and prospecting “challenges” we’ve all experienced. And he does a great job of explaining what real prospect development looks like—how it works, who does what, and when.

And once that picture was painted for me, I realized something else:

Never in my entire 20+ year career as a marketing practitioner and consultant, have I worked with a B2B company that had a real prospect development capability. Marketing? Sure. Inside Sales? Yup. Outside Sales? Of course. Sales Ops? Check. CRM and marketing automation? You betcha.

But even with these groups and toolsets, true prospect development just wasn’t happening—at least not in the consistent, methodical, and effective way that I now know is possible.

So…if you’re wondering if your lead generation and prospecting processes are as effective as they really could be, I encourage you to check out Dan’s interview and book. And while I could be wrong, I’d be willing to bet at least a brew (or two) that your lead generation puzzle is missing a piece, too—a really big piece.

 

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