Instead of getting actioned, they get filed away in a box, lost on a computer system or fall through the gap between marketing and sales. In many cases, simply fixing these cracks in the sales cycle may yield enough new business to fill the pipeline and meet even the most ambitious quotas

Don’t believe it? Consider this: DaiShõ conducted a study on trade-show participant follow up. In spite of spending huge sums on their stand, investing expensive sales time by placing their salespeople on the stand in the exhibition hall and then spending more money on advertising and literature, the study revealed that only 1 in 7 companies, who had received enquiries actually followed these up. One company, that was actually identified as one of three potential suppliers for an expensive business intelligence solution by a visitor to the exhibition, failed to even return calls from this big spending buyer.

This lack of responsiveness isn’t an isolated incident. One DaiShõ client spent six figures on a promotional campaign that generated more than 1,500 responses. Yet it could document contact with just 37 of the customers who responded.

Failure to follow up on the opportunities already generated by a company’s existing marketing and business development programme is pervasive. Several recent studies have found that as many as 80.0% of leads generated by marketing programmes are never followed up by salespeople. So, if you’re wondering how to make your numbers this quarter, the fact is you probably have enough hot prospects already in your system – and a timely response to their inquiries might be enough to set you far apart from the competition. Here are some tips to help you find those hot prospects and ensure new ones don’t fall through the same cracks in the system.

1. Dissect the various stages of your sales cycle. You’ll probably find more than you bargained for – and a lot of new ways to get quick results with a relatively small investment. For example you could find that you haven’t clearly differentiated between a lead (suspect) and a sales-ready lead (prospect). So you may be spending time with suspects who aren’t ready to buy and then drop them – with no system in place to catch these leads later, when they are ready to be real prospects

2. When you do find big cracks in the system, find out why they exist. Rushing resources in to fill the crack might just open a new crack somewhere else. There’s a good chance someone in your company already knows something about the prospect that you don’t. Check with your colleagues and sales manager before you change anything.

3. Bring marketing and sales together for a heart-to-heart talk. It might be painful, but you should be able to fix a range of problems. Some of the most common include the fact that sales don’t know when marketing is launching a new campaign until it’s too late and marketing doesn’t know how sales use (or don’t use) their sales support tools or what they really need to sell more effectively.

Working smart always delivers better results than working hard alone. When you learn to use your prospect base effectively you’ll find that prospects exist in your system who are ready to buy from you, when you make the right approach.