Waylon and Willie and the boys sang a poignant country ballad about wanting to get back to the basics of love—by going to Luckenbach Texas. Maybe it’s time those of us in sales and marketing got back to the basics of our business—by taking a close look at common but non-productive approaches to revenue creation.

Here are the top ten myths—or tall tales as our cowboy friends might say—of revenue creation, and what can be done to turn them around.

10. Adopt a shotgun approach and let ‘er rip
Myth: Broad targeting ensures maximum coverage. And it takes too much effort to test programs.
Reality: Your prospect universe is probably smaller than you think. Inside your prospect universe are segments that are substantially more responsive than others (some by as many as 9x). Segmentation and testing identify high value segments that allow you to increase ROI on marketing and sales investments

9. Concentrate on generating as many leads as you can
Myth: The more leads you generate, the more you’ll close.
Reality: This would be correct if all leads were high value, ready buyer sales opportunities. But programs typically deliver large quantities of raw, unfiltered and unqualified leads that clog pipelines. Sales actually needs fewer, more qualified opportunities—effectively managed to ensure a return and delivered at the right time. (See: http://www.pointclear.com/fewer-leads.pdf)

8. Use inside resources for qualifying and nurturing leads
Myth: Sales should be qualifying and following up on marketing’s leads.
Reality: Occupied with delivering as many leads as possible at the lowest possible cost per lead, marketing doesn’t have resources to filter, augment and nurture opportunities. Sales reps are paid to close short term opportunities and not pursue the flood of low value non-leads. The solution is a dedicated “lead farm” group charged with qualifying, nurturing and delivering ready buyer opportunities.

7. Don’t waste time on market intelligence
Myth: You can’t combine demand generation and market intelligence in the same program, and we know our market anyway.
Reality: Gathering, analyzing and reporting on marketing intelligence from a demand generation program is straightforward and helps pinpoint future offers, targeting and programs. This simple step can more than double your return on future marketing and sales investments. Market intelligence also positions your sales executives as knowledgeable and helps elevate them to a trusted advisor position.

6. Keep contacting the original target market
Myth: If they aren’t qualified now, keep marketing to them until they are.
Reality: Clearly there are always companies on the cusp of potential value. However, at least half of the investments in most marketing programs are wasted on ongoing contact of unqualified prospects. Efficient pre-qualification cuts suspects out that don’t meet minimum firmographic requirements or have recently acquired competing solutions.

5. Pick your best medium and stick with it
Myth: When results from one medium look good, throw more money and resources at it.
Reality: Success lies in a well planned and coordinated multi-media approach. C-level executives have never been busier or harder to reach, and the key is to engage them personally and directly using a combination of telephone calls, voice mail messages and emails.

4. Hit them one time and move on
Myth: If prospects are not involved in an active evaluation, they’re not worth pursuing.
Reality: Between 5 and 10% of the market has a need for your solution at any given point in time. Priorities can shift quickly, and implementing a multi-touch contact strategy is a critical element in uncovering pain and initiatives as prospects move into an evaluating mode.

3. Ignore mid-term and long-term opportunities
Myth: With the pressure to make numbers this quarter, the only focus should be on short-term opportunities.
Reality: Mid-term and long-term leads can be as valuable as near-term opportunities. A successful multi-touch, multi-media strategy features cost effective resources nurturing and educating prospects until they become ready buyers. Many so-called “long term” leads can actually be accelerated into short-term buying cycles if managed correctly from the start.

2. Don’t worry about the gap between marketing and sales
Myth: Marketing’s focus on high lead quantity and low lead cost is generating the opportunities sales needs.
Reality: The disconnect between marketing and sales results in high quantities of low value non-leads. Corrective action means affirming the missions of marketing to generate demand and sales to close and adding a dedicated lead farm group to qualify, nurture and deliver ready buyers.

1. When it ain’t broke, don’t fix it
Myth: We have been doing it this way for years.
Reality: Shotgun targeting, volume over quality, incorrect resources and the rest… they make for a marketing and sales merry-go-round—with all parties hesitant to change. The tendency is to be afraid of jeopardizing short-term sales by doing anything differently. But take a good hard look at all of your planned programs, and apply the realistic, high return approaches described above. (For a deeper dive on program, access our recent report titled Five Silver Bullets For Revenue Growth.)

We reckon Waylon and Willie and the boys were feeling no pain with their wine, women and song approach. Unfortunately, without a back-to-basics look at sales and marketing approaches, many of us with revenue responsibility could find ourselves in the opposite situation. Until and unless we dispel the tall tales that prevail in our profession, we’ll find ourselves a long way from Luckenbach—and farther than we need to be from our revenue generation goals.