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Why Your Sales Force Needs Fewer Marketing Leads
Yes, you read the title correctly. Sales reps don’t need more marketing leads. They need
fewer leads—or more accurately, fewer raw, unfiltered, unqualified marketing leads.
Good sales reps are by nature hunters, eager to close in for the kill. Take Steve, for
example. Watch what happens when he receives a lead list: he rifles through them seeking
the ideal prospect.
- Not a senior executive? Out.
- Budget undefined? Goodbye.
- Next-year decision? No way.
Steve is obviously making some poor decisions with that lead list. For example, a recent
study by KnowledgeStorm and Artemis Group found that for technology products and services,
line-of-business managers and functional titles are much better sources for marketing
leads than senior executives. And the average technology purchase starts as an inquiry on
the Internet and can often take a year or more until fruition.
But to be fair to Steve, he is paid to sell—not to interpret a lead list. Moreover, he is
jaded from bad marketing practices. In his rookie year, he wasted enormous amounts of time
reviewing marketing’s lead list and following up on so-called "qualified leads." As it
turned out, one-fourth had erroneous phone numbers and addresses. Another 20% of the lead
list came from consultants, competitors and students. Most of the others had little or no
pre-qualification information. None had been filtered or nurtured in any way by marketing.
("That’s not our role," said the marketing manager.)
Meanwhile, over in the marketing department, Jennifer is completing her monthly report.
"We’re on track for a great quarter in lead generation," she writes. "This month we
generated 1,278 marketing leads from all sources—that’s a 30% gain over last year! And in
spite of higher ad rates, we continue to keep our cost-per-lead under $100.00!"
Jennifer’s report says nothing about how marketing leads are qualified and nurtured, how
the lead list was created, or what the sales force has done with previous marketing leads.
Which leaves one to wonder: Does anyone in this company’s management understand why
investments in sales and marketing are not resulting in closed business? Do they realize
that the real money spent to create a lead list is wasted unless the leads are managed and
monitored to ensure a return?
The true measure of successful marketing should be how well marketing creates a lead list
of sales opportunities that have a high potential of developing into sales. The true
measure of sales should be how well they close these qualified marketing leads.
Far too many companies, however, evaluate marketing’s success by the size of the lead list
they hand over to sales. These companies do not have effective processes and methodologies
to track anything other than the number of marketing leads generated and transferred to
the company’s lead list and the associated cost. Many of the same companies fail to hold
sales accountable for closing the qualified leads and for reporting back results that feed
the marketing and sales model. The overall result is often wasted marketing dollars and
wasted sales time.
How can the blame game between sales and marketing be resolved? What if, instead of
reporting about a lead list and how many low-value marketing leads were sent to Steve and
his colleagues, Jennifer reported the following:
- "This month, marketing added 14 new prospects to our Sales Opportunity Development
program. A total of 41 sales opportunities are currently under development by marketing."
- "In June, sales received 10 fully nurtured and qualified leads representing $3,520,000
in potential near-term revenue. I have attached a summary report."
By preparing a comprehensive "Sales Opportunity Report," Jennifer could clearly document
the characteristics of the marketing leads in several areas:
- Sales representative assigned
- Propect’s company and the decision maker
- Revenue potential
- Initial contact date
- Number of weeks lead was nurtured
- Number of program touch points used
- Date lead was handed off to sales representative
- Expected date of purchase decision
Such a report might indicate that sales representative "Carol Barrett" received two
qualified marketing leads this month. Each had already been contacted at least seven
times; the best touch point techniques use multiple media—some combination of phone, voice
message, e-mail, letter, and direct mail. Each lead is deemed to have "graduated" from
unknown or long-term status to a near-term decision-making mode. For each of the qualified
leads, marketing provided Carol with a complete contact history, a company profile, and a
thorough overview of the budget, the decision timeline, individuals involved in the
decision, any events or other factors driving the decision, pain points, hot buttons, and
competition.
When presented with a few well-qualified marketing leads, rather than an unfiltered lead
list, Carol gives them priority attention. For one thing, she knows her regional manager
will be inquiring about these qualified leads. More importantly, she knows from experience
that these marketing leads are real or she would not be getting them. Her company has
already established a relationship with the decision maker, who is expecting Carol’s call.
Which lead generation machine would your company’s sales force prefer—the one that gives
Steve a large lead list full of unfiltered marketing leads, or the one that gives Carol
two qualified leads that are expected to close within six months?
Read the next chapter | | | more |  |
07/2006, Dan McDade
| | Dan McDade is the founder and president of PointClear, the Business Prospect Outsourcing company. Before PointClear, he served as Vice President of Marketing for the direct mail firm Jackson & Perkins and as President of UST: The Business Marketing Group
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