While some companies understand the need to test their value proposition as described earlier, even those companies can miss the idea of developing a lead-generation engine. In a hurry to demonstrate traction, some companies might hire one or several sales executives, give them a selling story, or not, and tell them to ‘go sell.’ The insinuation is that new sales executives need to sell something fast. Because of course with their gilded contact lists and pedigree within your industry comes at a price.

But this strategy—if you can call this Hail Mary play a strategy—is a waste of money and disguises a dangerous release of control by owners and executive staff. Especially for companies that enjoy few barriers to entry, banking on a sales star’s Rolodex seriously compromises the asset value of the company, because the mercenary you just hired from a competitor can just as easily leave. He knows that his customers are more loyal to him than to you, his employer, non-compete agreements notwithstanding.

And even if you subscribe to a Darwinian approach to sales executives (if sales exec #1 can’t sell something fast, just replace him with another one), think about this: What are you hiring him for anyway? To prospect? To comb through his little black book for not-too-stale customers who happen to need your product today? Or are you hiring sales pros to close deals?

Even if your sales pro has a few leads, are they leads for what you sell today? Or for what he sold last year? Will his leads force you to invest in product modifications to suit that customer? And having made those investments, can your sales guy keep your pipeline full of similar leads ready to buy your product today? And if not, he’ll just do more prospecting, right? Well, when is he supposed to close deals?

So, if you’re dead-set on asking a six-figure sales pro to turn over rocks rather than close deals, why do you think he wants to do that?

Good sales pros know that they get paid to close deals, even if you don’t. Good deals. Deals that will move your strategy forward. Sales pros want to close strategic business.  Anything less, and they know that they are underperforming.

And they are money-focused. They will draw a line between their first day on the job and their first commission check. And that’s what you should want for them too. Because that implies  revenue for you. Sales pros, paid at least in part on commission, want to go where there is a product already defined, where selling stories and pricing have been worked out. They want to go where the leads are. If you don’t have those things, if you don’t have leads, you should be wary of any sales person who says he can close deals for you.

Look at it another way: A sales executive will cost you from $300 to $800 a day. Every day that resource spends rummaging around his attic for leads is a day your sales executive is not closing a deal for you. Can you afford to wait?

So if you are looking at spending $300 to $800 a day on sales for the first time, what should you do? Can you build a process that funnels leads—solid, on-strategy, ready-to-buy leads—into your company so that your sales executive can close deals now? You can. It’s called lead-generation.  It’s called marketing.

The value proposition, as discussed last time, helps companies focus on growth markets; that is, on products and services that their customers want to buy. By focusing sales resources on the value proposition where customers are most receptive, sales performance improves. As resources are re-deployed from lower-performing products, the cycle feeds on itself, increasing payback on your sales and marketing investment.

But no one is brilliant enough to write a perfect story from whole cloth. And besides, we aren’t so much telling our client’s story, as searching for the aspects of our client’s story that resonate most with their customers. In effect, we are closing the gap between our client’s version of their story, and how that story is heard by customers. Closing that gap is how we define customer quality.

We test the value proposition by using it. By selling. We sell for the client using the new story.  We tell the story and observe where customers see the most value. Selling is the best way to gain feedback and adjust the value proposition.

In the testing phase, our sales executives work with our marketing consultants to produce sales scripts, selling pieces, updated price sheets, proposal forms, deal documents, everything necessary to complete the sales kit prior to roll-out. By getting all the pieces in place, sales professionals hired later to ramp up sales can be effective and productive right from the start.

Keep in mind, most of our work is with business-to-business (B2B) clients. So usually our customers have a relatively small number of valuable customer relationships.  Like us, our clients build their business one relationship at a time. Therefore, investing in a focused value proposition, or selling story, provides a high return on investment, a high ROI.