It's hard to believe but multiple studies indicate that 70 to 80 percent of leads created by the marketing department are never followed up on. To a marketer working hard to generate leads that's devastating news, but it might be our own fault. Dan McDade of CRM Magazine reports that creating mass amounts of unqualified leads causes sales staff burnout and mistrust of the marketing department. His piece, "Three Reasons Why Sales Needs Fewer Leads" explains,
"...high-volume lead generation is a lot like creating a haystack in which the sales rep is responsible for finding the proverbial needle. Bona fide candidates do exist, but they're often hidden among the onslaught of unqualified leads being pushed to sales. This is why many sales reps cast a jaded eye toward leads generated by marketing--it's too hard to find the leads that translate into real sales opportunities."
So here's where the frustration comes in. Salespeople love getting leads, but not the kind of leads that don't go anywhere. They need to be qualified leads and ones that are going to lead to sales. This a fundamental shift needs to occur in both the marketing department and in management.
"...organizations tend to evaluate the success of marketing initiatives based on the number of leads generated or worse, the cost per lead."
Even if you as the marketer realize the need for change, you can't move forward with out management's support. No one is going to risk personal compensation and glowing reviews, if still rewarded for providing a large bulk of leads. Management must realize that marketing effectiveness is not generating the most leads, but generating quality leads. Once you begin tying goals and compensation to sales, you'll get a much more effective marketing department.
How do you do this? With CRM. Enter each lead and tie it directly to an opportunity. When that opportunity closes, you can tie that directly back to the original lead source. Now you know both the number of leads generated and the effectiveness of those leads.
Now you can begin sorting out good leads from bad and addressing problems like these:
"No one augments the leads with demographic and "firmographic" data. And no one nurtures long-term prospects into short-term ones. These are all critical steps in the lead refinement and management process that are being overlooked."
Let's say you go to two trade shows, X and Y. Trade show X returns 1,000 leads for sales, while Y returns only 50. Given budget for only one and both being equal in price, the obvious choice is to return to Trade show X, right?
Well maybe. What happens if the Trade show X leads were only interested in your Ipod giveaway, while Trade show Y had genuine qualified leads. If X led to two sales and Y lead to twenty, now the game is totally different. Tracking from lead to sale makes a huge difference in making decisions.
When you can identify the right leads to give to sales, your follow up rate will sky rocket. Dump loads of unqualified leads on sales and they are going to revolt. McDade nails this:
"This cycle can be broken through processes that identify and nurture the most likely sales candidates."
Bottom line. Sales people are compensated by selling. They don't care about qualifying leads for you or nurturing them through the process. They want to make a sale.
Therefore it is our responsibility as marketers to sort leads and provide the most qualified candidates to sales. Sure, we can toss everything over to sales, but it's not going to work and most (70-80%) of your hard work will be wasted.
Take those 1,000 leads and whittle them down. We sort our leads into ready to buy, eventually ready to by, and disqualified. Only the "ready to buys" get passed to sales. For the "eventuals", we give ownership to marketing who nurtures them with drip marketing and follow up phone calls until they move into the "ready to buy" category.
It is a tough, fundamental shift for many companies to take on but it's very effective. Since doing this our sales follow up has skyrocketed, our missed opportunities dropped, and most importantly our overall sales increased.
