Three Tips on Managing Leads from Inside Sales

By Symantec Guest Blog

At the Vision conference in May, Symantec shared more details on its North American Channel Strategy, which provides the foundation for how partners and Symantec play together to deliver lifetime customer value. Our strategy shows that we’re thinking differently about the way we work with the channel, incentivize the channel and deliver value to our partners and customers. At the heart of the strategy is the belief that partners who differentiate themselves for our mutual customers should be worked with most closely.

Our new strategy isn’t just an idea we’re discussing, but a framework that we’re actively putting into practice. As vice president of Inside Sales, I lead the Symantec team that most often creates new opportunities for our closest North American partners. Symantec’s Inside Sales teams talk to more customers daily than any other part of our sales organization. That puts us on the front lines of generating leads. We speak with thousands of customers every day.

Our Inside Sales organization drives opportunities to partners in several ways. We create opportunity through our prospecting conversations with customers, which average several thousand of outbound calls every day. We also identify leads when customers call our inbound telesales line or online chat teams. In addition, Symantec’s marketing engine generates thousands of inquiries from customers every month who download whitepapers or attend webinars. Our Demand Generation team qualifies these inquiries and sends leads or appointments to our top partners.

We believe that Symantec’s success depends on our partners, and partner relationships are built into the structure of the Inside Sales team. With that in mind, I wanted to offer our top three partner tips for managing leads passed from our team:

Each day, we strive to create and share deals with our partners quickly. Long-term success in lead passing is built on understanding of each other’s strengths and the confidence that each partner will do their part. In our customer interactions, Symantec describes the business value of working through our trusted partners, and our partners swiftly follow up on passed leads. Customers respond best when our company and our top partners bring a shared vision that’s clear and compelling.

We’re thinking differently about how we deliver qualified leads. As we look to the future, we’re seeking partners who can create a lifetime of shared value for our customers.

John Belle is vice president of North America Inside Sales at Symantec. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly, and are part of The VAR Guy’s annual platinum sponsorship.