Hit the rewind button to Dec 22, 2014. The picture I painted finished with procurement of your rented target list for your new sector opportunity. This is where you want to start “flushing” out those companies (the submarines, as I called them last December) that may want to do business with you.

From the specific perspective of sales team modelling and sales team optimisation, the critical deliberation at this point is what resource you marshall to undertake the lead generation and qualification of your list. Do you want your on-the-road Sales Execs doing that? Many companies do. The savvy ones don’t. Better to get really clear on exactly what you want qualified in this “flushing” process. Get clear on what the lead will look like when handed over to the on-the-road Sales Exec to carry on with. Get clear on what, if any, technical/application knowledge your lead gen/lead qual resource will need to be able to successfully flush.

When well deliberated, in many B2B scenarios, the best answer will be to allocate this flushing responsibility to a specialist function or resource, and not your on-the-road Sales Execs. Better to optimise them toward the conversion of the received warm leads. In effect, your sales team modelling then takes on a co-ordinated external and internal sales team.