I don’t know what happened last night, but driving home I got really agitated about everything. What I need is a catcher. Not for pitching, even though it was opening day yesterday and I missed it, but for sales. After 11 years in business we finally figured out that sales and marketing are two separate roles.
That means that my job isn’t just to increase the visibility of the company but it is also to qualify leads and move them onto getting booked. The issue I have is the loss of control when I hand the sales off to the onboarding team. Last night I qualified a lead and handed it off for on boarding. What happened afterwards was a bunch of nothing.
I also recently sent out a bunch of reengagement messages to past clients and lo and behold we got a booking request from one. Again, crickets from the scheduling team. This should be a moment of celebration. The entire company should be as excited as me. Instead they treat it as an annoyance. It is like they don’t want to have any bookings, and currently we don’t.
I don’t know if mid-week travel has collapsed due to gas prices, TSA lines, and several other factors, but we got nothing during the week. I am the second busiest staff member with three to four visits a day. Back when I was in the field regularly that would be an embarrassingly light day.
From the highs of Christmas to these sudden lows it is shocking. We had less staff at Christmas time and were able to cover way more visits. Now it is like the company is drowning and doesn’t want to save itself while I am bringing in more and more quality clients.
Our failure rate at getting clients from contact to booking has increased and it is all in the handoff. I toss the onboarding team gold and they toss it in the trashcan. Marketing and sales is frustrating work. On one end I have no idea if anything I have done has truly increased visibility and on the other I am getting people to the handoff stage but no one is there to take it.
That is all I need. Someone to commit to the follow-up. Instead I send the lead and get nothing. The problem might be they don’t understand how fragile this system is. How delicate a qualified lead is, because all I’ve determined is they are a good fit for our company. They haven’t determined that yet, and the longer the delay the higher the chance they fall off, and that is what bothers me. All my work being wasted.
David Huzzard Writes 