For years, a sales lead was regarded as a valuable resource in the IT industry – regardless of quality, customer buying stage or context. More contacts meant more sales potential, and channel partners hoped that, given enough scale, some of them could be turned into contracts.
Today, this model is backfiring. More and more companies in the channel are beginning to loudly question the wisdom of bulk lead acquisition, pointing to low conversion and the rising costs of handling ‘blind’ contacts.
Instead of numbers, quality is becoming more and more important. It is no longer a question of how many potential customers end up in a partner’s system, but how they are vetted, matched and prepared for a sales call.
Such a change in attitude does not happen overnight, but is clearly emerging as a new standard in mature partnerships.
From leads to costs
Many integrators and VARs are now signalling that up to 80-90% of the leads they receive from manufacturers do not translate into real sales opportunities.
Added to this is the issue of repetition and lack of alignment. One partner serving the public sector gets a contact from a retail customer, another – specialised in the cloud – gets a lead on an on-premise solution.
As a result, the contact not only fails to lead to a sale, but consumes the time of the sales and technical teams trying to figure out whether the subject is even promising. Presales becomes unprofitable and confidence in leads from head office is severely damaged.
Which leads make sense?
In response to these challenges, partners are beginning to formulate their own expectations of lead quality. In practice, this means greater selectivity – not every contact is accepted, and many partners are putting in place internal qualification systems that filter leads before they reach the merchant.
Contextual information is at a premium: what interested the customer, what stage of decision-making they are in, whether they have spoken to another partner or vendor before.
Elements such as industry and technology fit, budget potential and the client’s real willingness to talk also matter. These types of leads do not have to be numerous – what matters for experienced partner companies is their predictability, not their scale.
Another interesting phenomenon is the change in rhetoric. There is less and less talk of ‘leads to be passed on’ and more talk of ‘sales opportunities to be worked with’. This shift in emphasis reflects well the expectation that vendors will engage not only in generating contacts, but also in qualifying them, planning their activities and supporting them in driving the sales process.
How are producers responding?
From the manufacturers’ perspective, the shift from mass lead generation to precision channel sales support means that existing practices need to be reviewed.
Companies that invest in the channel are increasingly seeing teams specialising in lead scoring, purchase intent analytics and account-based marketing campaigns.
It is not just about finding the customer, but about providing the partner with a contact that realistically fits their profile and competences.
Some vendors go a step further – creating joint ‘ideal customer’ (ICP) profiles with their partners, setting rules for the transfer of leads or offering the possibility of joint marketing activities, the goal of which is not the number of clicks, but the closure of a specific project.
Examples of activities also include the use of CRM data and predictive tools that analyse previous campaigns, measure contact activity and suggest which leads have the greatest potential.
This makes the process more transparent and partners do not feel like they have to ‘dig through’ random contact lists.
Quality as a shared risk – and shared gain
Changing the approach to leads is not just a matter of partner convenience. It’s also a way to increase the efficiency of the entire channel – from customer acquisition costs to sales cycle times to retention rates.
Fewer leads but better quality means less operational effort, greater end-customer satisfaction and more predictable revenue.
In this context, it is clear that the role of the vendor is changing – from a sender of leads to a contributor to the pipeline. This shift could prove crucial to the future of the channel.
At a time when B2B customers are making purchasing decisions increasingly on their own, partners need not so much ‘contacts from the market’ as complete pictures of the context in which the customer operates.
