When is a Sales Lead More Than Just a Lead?

When is a Sales Lead More Than Just a Lead?:

When It’s Managed Through the Entire Sales Process!

Now is not an easy time to be a B2B marketer.  Business climates may be improving in some industries but the pressure on the marketing team to build, run and manage campaigns that deliver qualified leads to the sales organization continues to increase. Many marketing organizations complain of being underfunded and sales teams continue to complain about the inadequate qualified lead flow from marketing.
A recent whitepaper from the Aberdeen Group entitled “Optimizing the Marketing to Sales Lifecycle” had some revealing facts about the criticality of properly executing the lead lifecycle management function.  The study surveyed 414 B2B marketing and sales executives around the globe to understand key trends and initiatives that deliver effective lead generation programs.
The study broke participating companies into 3 categories

• Best in Class: Top 20% of aggregate scorers
• Industry Average: Middle 50% of aggregate scorers
• Laggard: Bottom 30% of aggregate scorers

Companies were classified into one of these groups based on their aggregate self-assessment scores in areas such as:

• Clear definition of a qualified lead.
• Use of content based marketing and positional messaging to target the right audience without “selling”.
• Implementation of lead scoring and nurturing.
• Clearly defined process of transferring a qualified marketing lead to sales.
• Process to provide feedback to marketing on leads passed to sales.

Some rather startling differences surfaced between Best in Class and Laggard companies.
Best in Class Companies

• 50% of forecasted pipeline is marketing generated
• 48% of leads generated by marketing resulted in closed sales
• Experienced a 20% YOY improvement in marketing generated revenue

Laggard Companies

• 2% of forecasted pipeline is marketing generated
• 2% of leads generated by marketing resulted in closed business
• Experienced a 3% YOY decline in marketing generated revenue

Whether your are trying to move from Laggard to Industry Average or from Average to Best in Class, effectively managing the marketing to sales lead lifecycle is critical.
Some basic first steps would be to test your marketing content and messaging on an ongoing basis.

1. If you are not measuring your marketing campaigns – stop what you are doing until you can find a way to determine their effectiveness.
2. Next, rank, score and prioritize your inbound marketing leads to improve sales conversion.  Having your sale team chase unqualified leads is a waste of time and they will lose confidence in all leads sent their way.
3. Finally, consider implementing a marketing automation tool to help analyze program results on a vertical or channel level.