Lessons Learned and Insights from OpenView’s Leaders: A Lead Qual Blogging Reflection

This month marks my 3-year anniversary at OpenView, and since we launched our firm-wide blogging program a couple years back, I’ve been diligently writing posts each week that relate to launching a lead qualification team and the challenges that come with building/maintaining this type of initiative.

Many of my ideas come from learning experiences in working with different teams in OpenView’s portfolio–the issues that come up, and the ways that we’ve worked together collaboratively to resolve impediments and streamline processes. Other posts are, quite frankly, insights that I’ve absorbed from OpenView’s leaders, Brian Zimmerman, Scott Maxwell, and George Roberts.

Undoubtedly, looking back, there have been some posts that were average, and others that I’m really proud of — those that I like to share with portfolio companies or prospects that are considering launching this type of effort, or trying to make their current team more productive.

Here are some those posts that I am most proud of…

• The Gray Zone leads
• Does your team real exhaust leads before moving on to next verticals?
• Are you taking too long to adjust your lead qualification assets?
• Who has the capacity to manage your lead qualification team?
• Is your value proposition still as relevant as it was a year ago? Unlikely.
• How many calls does it REALLY take to have one conversation?
• You can’t be everything to everyone
• Enforcing metrics doesn’t equal micromanaging
• Have you created a follow up regiment for your sales team?
• Finding a buyer persona mentor
• Nurturing can’t be all marketing’s responsibility
• I, Me, My emails lead to failure

And finally, this post isn’t as informative from an “advice” standpoint, but I’m SO proud of the team’s the I’ve worked with that I highlighted in my 2011 review: A Year in Review: OpenView Labs’ Lead Qual Initiatives with the Portfolio in 2011.

Looking forward to many more lead qual learning experiences that I can share with readers in future entries!