"The failure to turn leads into initial sales meetings is even more disturbing when viewed over time," said Jim Dickie, managing partner at CSO Insights. "In 2004, 45% of firms surveyed reported leads to first call conversion rates of 50% or less. The latest survey's number of 54% shows serious erosion in sales effectiveness. If you can't get in the door, how are you going to get into the game and then win the game? It should be a wake-up call for sales organizations to look at prospecting tools and processes."

Overall sales performance can improve dramatically when salespeople have access to tools that focus on sales and event triggers, B2B social networking and in-depth news on prospective companies and their executives. For example, sales professionals are able to improve lead generation by targeting prospects with the greatest propensity to buy, a capability offered by Dow Jones SalesWorks.

"Leads generated by specific business events such as mergers or office moves, known as triggers, have significantly higher conversion rates than traditional lead sources," said Tom Aley, senior vice president and managing director, Dow Jones Business & Relationship Intelligence Group. "To ensure success in the current economic climate, sales teams must take advantage of tools like Dow Jones SalesWorks that enable event tracking and utilization of B2B social networking and provide up-to-date and accurate background information and news."

Dow Jones SalesWorks offers a range of smart prospecting and intelligence tools that help B2B sales professionals convert leads to sales faster. It combines a global data collection of more than 28 million executives and 17 million companies with cutting-edge technologies that leverage B2B social networks to connect salespeople to new contacts as well as monitor sales triggers across the Web for events and activities that signal the early sales opportunities.

Join Dow Jones and CSO Insights on April 8, 2009, for a Webinar discussing these challenges and issues www.solutions.dowjones.com/2009CSOWebinar. (continued...)

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