In the last column, the idea was presented that business development is not a sales lead qualification process. It's beyond that. What is sales lead qualification?

If you saw the movie (or play) Glengarry Glen Ross, you heard the sales manager played by Alec Baldwin lecturing his sales representatives about the sales leads for the best real estate development their office was selling. But first, they had to sell properties in their other developments for the privilege of getting the Glengarry leads. He said:

These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers.

Where did those sales leads come from? Advertising, telemarketing, home shows, and many other places, most likely. All marketing promotions efforts are designed to create orders or inquiries that result in economic transactions. They can be in the short term, like direct mail, or the long term, like corporate image advertising.

When an inquiry arrives at a business' doorstep, further data are required to determine if that inquiry is worth pursuing between parties. These data include product usage characteristics and circumstances, financial condition, geographic locations, and the immediacy of the needs, among other factors. If those criteria are a general match between the buyer and seller, that is worth pursuing.

This process works best when the product is known and recognized and demand for the product is established. Sales leads are "qualified" by a process of contact or research by office personnel or by a sales representative. The concept behind the process is that qualifying a sales lead costs less than "cold calling" or hunting for prospects from scratch.

Even cold calling had a systematic approach. You could always tell when an industry supplier, dealer or vendor rep had been in town cold-calling because the commercial printing pages had been ripped out of the Yellow Pages phone books in their hotel rooms. Over the years, this process would be improved by renting names from database companies like Dun & Bradstreet or from magazine circulation lists.

Then again, the entire process could be circumvented by hiring a sales rep with "a hot book of business." After all, cold-calling is expensive. Better to hire someone who already knows everyone. It's a shame that it doesn't work anymore. It's a shame it never really did.

Sales lead qualification will remain a standard part of selling and marketing. Today and in the future, this will become more automated and require less attention, and therefore, become lower on the list of actions of sales representatives.