An Interview with one of the "50 Most Influential Sales Lead Management Professionals":
M. H. (Mac) McIntosh, Mac McIntosh Inc. - The B2B Sales Lead Experts

Company URL

Who are your mentors and why?

What is the most helpful advice you've received to improve your business?

What is the most helpful advice you can give to help others improve their businesses?

How do you give back to the professional community?

What is your favorite business book?

What's your recommendation of the 4 steps?

Which 4 basic skills or process steps do you recommend?

With regards to Sales Lead Management:

1. Start by getting agreement with sales on the definition of a qualified, sales-ready lead.
2. Capture all inquiries in a database.
3. Follow up immediately with requested information and to determine if the lead is qualified as being sales-ready.
4. Use multi-touch lead nurturing campaigns to keep in touch with longer-term prospects, spoon-feeding them information about the benefits of your company and its products and services until they are sales-ready. (These longer term leads represent 3 out of four of your sales opportunities.)

In your opinion, the best book on marketing is:

Your reasons for choosing this book are:

What would you say to someone who asks what to do first in managing sales leads?

Run! No, seriously, I'd tell them to call two customers or prospects every week. That is a great way to learn more about their needs and thoughts as they relate to your company, its products or services and your marketing-driven lead generation messaging, offers, etc.

Talking directly to customers empowers you to convince your bosses to do the right things by allowing you to say things like "I was talking to our biggest customer, Fred Smith at Framostats, Inc, and he thinks we should do XXXX."

If someone wants to nurture sales inquiries what process would you recommend?

Develop ongoing, multi-touch, multi-media campaigns designed to share relevant information and make offers related to each different stage of the buying process. That requires having a deep understanding of your customers and their needs, developing messaging and content mapped to their buying process stages,

What steps would you suggest to measure the ROI for sales inquiries?

I believe that ROI isn't only measured in terms of sales revenue.

The following are all indicators of ROI from sales lead programs:
� Marketing activities
� Marketing touches
� Inquiries generated
� Marketing Qualified Leads
� Sales Accepted Leads
� Sales Qualified Leads
� Close/won business from leads