{sidebar id=19 align=left} Have you ever seen a raw diamond in it's uncut, unpolished state? It's really not that impressive. I was surprised the first time I saw one, and thought "who was the first person to see these and think "you know, with a little work, I bet this thing would be pretty."

Of course, in the hands of an expert, these cloudy little glass-like chunks become priceless gems, and are the basis of a global industry worth more than $50 billion, annually. And left to my own devices, I'd have passed them by as little more than a passing curiosity

I've noticed that many businesses are doing the same thing with a fair number of promising leads. It's not that they are clueless, or even bad at sales. But it takes years of experience and a fair amount of expertise to differentiate between a lead that just needs a little work, and one that's a complete dead end.

Like any thing in the business world to really be good you must know your stuff. And there are many reasons why perfectly respectable business owners, sales managers and sales reps don't have the extensive base of knowledge that can help.

First, education and training in the world of lead generation isn’t easy to come by…most people learn about lead generation from a co-worker who learned from a coworker and so on. It's like an apprenticeship. And while it's great to learn how to do something from a master, the apprenticeship approach is built on and steeped in tradition. The master is a master because he's been doing the same things the same way for decades. And he learned them as an apprentice from a master who had been doing them the same way for decades.

Trouble is, there just aren't formal guilds of salesmen, as there are with plumbers and electricians and the rare artisan crafts that still exist. No overarching organization to help maintain a sense of unity in the "craft" of sales. This education gap creates a lag of innovation that hasn’t kept pace with changes in the technology and communication revolution.

The world (even the business world) moved at a fairly comfortable pace until the '80s, when FedEx appeared and created a next-day sense of urgency. Then came the fax machine. Then cell phones. Then email. Today, you can have a video conference with two dozen people on three different continents just as easily as you can pop your head into the next cubicle.

But we're still using the same lead generation techniques that were "perfected" in the early '80s. And communication is just one facet of the changes that have hit the business world in the last two decades.

The result is mediocre processes and tools that crash new business programs. To survive, businesses have to move faster than your sales team can work to influence their everyday decisions, much less the really critical ones. Or, at least, faster than they can work now. There are things you can do to make it easier on them (like outsourcing lead generation and qualification).

{sidebar id=7} But even that might not be enough. Because sometimes the problem isn't necessarily on the prospect's end. Sales call reluctance has been a problem has been around since the beginning of time. Sales people unnecessarily talk themselves out of cold calling, following up on leads and going on sales calls all the time. They decide not to pursue a lead for any of a thousand reasons: the prospect didn't really SOUND that interested...people in that industry just don't buy...they already HAVE someone else for that...they don't USE this sort of product...etc., etc., etc.

Perhaps the prospect WAS interested, but was busy handling some crisis. Maybe that industry just hasn't caught on yet (think about the benefits of being the first to tap a new market!). Maybe you could do a better job then they're current source.

The truth is, your sales team just might not have the TIME they need to adequately qualify all of the leads. If you're overworked, it's easy to use minor setbacks to justify not following through. And if they do have time, they still might not have the tools or experience to really do it right.

But looking back, who knows what got left behind in that giant pile of cloudy glass chunks...and what they really might have been worth with a little polishing?