What about Tomorrow?

I just spoke with a marketing/sales person (who shall remain nameless) at a vendor that has a very long form on their Contact Us page. I mentioned to him that they are probably losing a lot of prospects at that form since people are less prone to complete a long form as opposed to a short form. They like it long because he believes that helps qualify the prospect - only those that are serious and ready to buy today will complete it. While I do agree with this to a degree, it was what he said next that still has me shaking my head. He went on to state that "and these are the only people we want to hear from."

Really? While I can (sort of) see you not wanting to hear from people that aren't remotely serious about ever buying a product and just happen to be doing some very preliminary research, but what about those that are serious and ready to buy today but simply get annoyed by very long online forms? Don't you want to reach them? Or how about those leads that are serious but are planning to take take a few weeks/months to make a decision. After all, aren't they the vast majority of leads?

How many business software buyers start their research and make their final decision in a day or two? How hard is it to automate an email marketing campaign (potentially supplemented with a phone call or two) to cultivate leads over a period of weeks or months, which happens to be the buying cycle for the majority of major software purchases?