The year before I started working for a large hospitality operator, they had run a telemarketing program that they considered an utter failure. The President asked me to do better.

Sounds simple. I'd just follow a proven model that I'd run successfully before. But I wasn't sure that it was that simple.

I knew the in-house telemarketers and sales staff who had participated in the previous year's program. They stayed on script and were diligent with data entry. The scripts weren't bad. The objectives achievable. Why hadn't the program worked for my predecessor?

So I investigated and discovered a greenfield standing at the entrance to a goldmine of qualified leads.

You see, the VP Sales at Falls Avenue Resorts and her team had actually done a decent job the previous year. The 'small' problem with the program that my predecessor had setup for them was that there was no way to pull a consolidated report of leads by category (immediate, hot, cool, forget about it).

Each team member was responsible for following up on their assigned set of contacts. There were a large number of contacts assigned to each person and staff had other duties. They were expected to schedule their own followups (assisted by a CRM scheduling system that reminded them about followup actions.)

The problem was that when management asked "How are you making out with the program?" the only information that was top of mind, was their last call. Each call was an isolated task not easily associated with the program. As you might suspect, management's conclusion was: "IT DIDN'T WORK!"

Oversight disintegrated. Staff ennui set in and follow up trickled down to zero.

I spent full week going through and consolidating thousands of contacts. I don't think that the VP Sales changed her sales team's approach but I do know that they secured more net new business. It only makes sense to build upon what came before.

Sometimes your greenfield isn't discovered with a new idea or unique approach. Sometimes, rather than saying "Ok, I'll do it differently" you have a chance to say "Here are the positive results from last year ... keep up the good work!"