As a business development representative, I am armed with collateral to help prospects gain insight into my client’s products and services. This is part of our job- providing additonal information when we can’t qualify a prospect as a lead. But is there such a thing as ‘too much collateral’? The answer depends on a few things: your personal preference, how in depth your client wants to go, how many different solutions you have and the organization itself.
I currently support two clients: one is a company that works with business decision management technology and the other one provides after market customer support software. These two clients could not be more different in their approaches of providing me collateral to pass along to clients. The first client wants me to have a brief discussion and pass interested or qualified prospects over right away. The other client has armed me with an excel file of 71 organized collateral that could take me days to go through and read.
Working with a client that does not provide collateral to offer to prospects can be difficult. My sales reps are great with responding via phone and email when I need to contact them with specific instances, but it can be a little frustrating when on the phone with a prospect and having nothing to send if they request information. This can be looked at in a good way, because it forces you as a BDR to try and get a call set up; but it can be difficult.
On the other hand, working with my client who has given me more collateral than I can use has its pros and cons as well. I always have something to send to a prospect when they request specifics on the software or case studies, but it also makes it easier for them to push me off the phone. It is useful for me since it provides more information about the software, but sometimes it can be difficult when I want to read a specific file and it’s hidden in the document of seventy other files. My clients took some time to organize it in a way that makes it easier for them and for me, so after months of working together, I can find what I am looking for easily.
You learn to work with what you have after supporting the same clients for a few months, but it is definitely helpful to have some information in your court. Having open communication with your clients is key when making sure you are armed with the materials needed to provide the client with qualified leads. How does your inside sales team deal with too much collateral, or none at all?
