This is a great question with many layers of complexity that might take a few more articles.  The first questions you need to ask yourself is: Did you hire the right sales people?

If they’re getting lazy while running leads then maybe you’ve hire a lazy person.

Recruiting, training and managing sales trams of various sizes over the years I’ve noticed that the most important part of any sales team and any company for that matter is who they have on their team.

I’ve interviewed companies that have 2 sales reps and do 10 Million in sales in home improvements per year, average $5M in sales per rep vs some others that have 20 sales reps over the year and only end up doing $6M.  It’s all about the right people on the team.

When I had free rain of a local roofing company for a season here in the twin cities I experimented around with multiple compensation strategies.  Being naturally gifted in marketing we had tons of leads, we just needed sales reps to run leads exclusively.

Commission, commission with a draw, flat payment per sale and base plus commission.  What I found is that I could find people to come work for me on a commission only but they’d be gone as soon as another “better” opportunity came their way.

The guys I gave a “draw” to always found some excuse why they needed more and hadn’t collected the money on the jobs they had.  When I finally switched to a base plus commission I was able to hire competent sales reps and I then had control of when they’d show up, how they’d dress, and what they’d say when they got there.  It worked great.

In conclusion

So in my opinion, if you have lazy salesmen, leads will make your salesmen lazier.  If you have closers who know what they’re doing then they’ll run a lead with the same enthusiasm as a self generated referral.