When pitching agency marketing services, should you get into technical details or keep it simple?

The dangers of being too technical:

• You confuse the prospect.
• You obscure the value proposition.
• You arouse suspicion with "smoke and mirrors" verbiage.

The dangers of being too simple:

• The prospect questions your expertise.
• You fail to differentiate yourself.
• You arouse suspicion with "too good to be true" verbiage.

The better you know the prospect, the easier it is to determine how technical the pitch should be. Some prospects have no interest at all in hearing about the technical details of an SEO or PPC campaign; others want to talk about nothing else. Some prospects are well informed about the ins and outs of Internet marketing; others admit they know very little.

Perhaps the most challenging type of prospect is the one who thinks he/she is up to speed on technical details but isn't. The problem here is if you avoid technical details, the prospect will dismiss you, but if you get into the technical details, you'll provoke an argument you can't win.

I don't have any ideas about how to overcome this last situation — do you? Fortunately, the type of prospect who erroneously considers himself an expert is somewhat rare, at least in our experience at Straight North. Generally speaking, the easiest way to determine how technical to make a pitch — ask the prospect.

• How technical do you want the discussion to be?
• Do you want to get into the weeds or just have us "bottom line" it for you?
• Are there any technical issues in particular you want us to cover?

Usually simple questions like these will save you a lot of time and angst preparing your presentation. Not only that, you'll probably score big points with the prospect by being considerate enough to ask.

The key to effective presentations in this regard is flexibility. Some agencies and some sales people just can't get off one track or the other; either they're always putting too much technical discussion in or leaving too much out.

Far better is to be flexible and adapt your presentation to the circumstances of the individual case. This requires preparation, maybe even to the extent of having two (or more) pitches formatted and ready to go for technical and nontechnical presentations. The benefit, of course, is threefold: more types of clients your pitch will appeal to, more effective pitching in every case, and more new clients.

Presumably, all sales departments want lead generation to be a priority. Nevertheless, some sales departments are set up to stifle lead generation rather than promote it. This is not done intentionally, of course, but sometimes a trickling lead pipeline has leaks that are barely visible to the naked eye. Here are a few issues that typically crop up.

1. Talented Reps Spending Too Much Time Prospecting

• The problem. To maximize revenue growth, top sales reps should be spending the bulk of their time in front of hot prospects developing and closing deals. But if these reps are forced to spend hours upon hours digging up leads (a slow, laborious process that’s 90 percent failure), that means fewer deals are going to close. What’s more, great closers are not necessarily great prospectors, so even the quality of prospects being developed may end up being subpar.

• The solution. Having robust inbound and outbound lead generation marketing campaigns takes the burden off the sales reps’ shoulders. In addition to or instead of this, developing an in-house prospecting team or using a third-party prospect development firm will increase the quantity and quality of leads.

2. Reps Clinging to Inactive Leads

• The problem. Sales reps are assigned leads … and never let them go, but also never work them. Over time, great potential leads sit dormant, while competitors swoop in and grab them.

• The solution. Leads should be assigned to a rep for a given amount of time, a time that is reasonable based on the selling cycle of your business. Once that time limit passes, leads should be reassigned or made available to anyone else on the sales team. A good classification system for leads also helps sales managers quickly identify and track the best leads that are in the system.

3. Insufficient Prospecting Review and Accountability

• The problem. Whether lead generation is assigned to sales reps, prospecting teams or marketing departments, productivity and effectiveness wither away because nobody in sales management is tracking results and pushing for improvements. As a lead generation marketing agency, we know all too well how crucial continuous review and testing are to successful campaigns. The minute you put an SEO, PPC or email campaign on autopilot, it’s heading for a crash landing.

• The solution. The first step is to track results and evaluate whether lead generation is going up, down or in circles. Dig in to the details to identify potential weaknesses in the system. From there, test alternative methods to find more effective approaches. Analyzing all of this as a team (with marketers, sales managers and sales reps involved) is tremendously healthy, but one person must ultimately be held accountable for lead generation — if not, lead generation will be just one more bullet point on a long list of priorities.

It’s easy for issues such as these to slide under the radar because it’s natural for sales management to focus on the other end of the funnel, to make sure great opportunities on the verge of doing business are turning into great customers.

But it takes as much time, training and talent to find leads as it does to close them, which is why a solid plan for lead generation is a must for every successful sales team.