Most sales organisations – and most of the sales people who work for them – are capable of describing their target market in broad demographic terms. They might, for example, choose to focus on organisations of a certain size, in one or a number of industries, in one or a number of geographical locations.
Their marketing departments might be chartered to build lists and to generate leads with these characteristics. And, of course, it’s relatively easy to identify target companies by applying these simple filters. But there’s a problem – particularly in complex B2B environments: these basic demographic characteristics are very poor predictors of whether any specific organisation is actually likely to do business with you.
It’s no wonder that “leads” that have been generated are rarely treated with urgency or enthusiasm by the sales people receiving them. They know from bitter experience that that the majority of these enquiries
