Lead management really comes down to the basics. In this post we outline how to approach common problems in bridging the gap between your sales and marketing departments.

Symptoms of a Lead Quality Problem:

  1. Leads are delivered to sales with little, if any, specific lead-by-lead feedback.
  2. Marketing’s objective defaults to quantity and CPL because there is no other way to measure, nor report return.
  3. Forecasts are consistently inaccurate.

The problem isn’t recognizing these common problems, but rather fixing them. The common denominator to all three is sales. Sales reps consistently do not value marketing leads. Sales reps do what you pay them to do – so basic changes in forecasting in relation to compensation are always required if you want to tighten up the process. Once reps recognize that leads generated thoughtfully using a multi-cycle, multi-touch, multi-media approach are more valuable we suggest that you put these leads directly on your forecast with a 10%  confidence factor at the average selling price. Taking a lead off of the forecast should take a level of consideration by senior management. This is the only process to put teeth into the forecast and demand creation process.

To help in the process it is necessary to audit ea. lead and to report back to sales and marketing on the effectiveness of lead follow up. Reports generated from this auditing are some of the most effective tools your company will ever receive from sales and marketing.

To conclude – there are a lot of reasons why there are gaps between marketing and sales. None is more costly to your company than spending money on “leads” that are not really good prospects, or creating good leads that are just not followed up on.