The business publication B2B Marketing has published insights from a survey that states “Sales rejects 80% of marketing-qualified leads“. It also reveals that 60% of marketers are measured by the quantity of leads accepted and 70% by campaign generated revenue.
*Surprised face*
In organisations with a ‘sales philosophy’, this info is no surprise at all. Growing organisations, where the sale is considered more important than the development of a new product feature, typically have a sales philosophy. There is a need for more sales and, therefore, the sales team expects a lead that is already salivating at the thought of acquiring the product!
In no way as a defense, 23% of Marketers felt that brand awareness was an important metric for measuring the Marketer’s success. A concerning 4% of respondents didn’t know how marketing success was measured! (Totally unrelated, there has been a 7% increase in job openings for Marketers this year.)
The reality is that in many organisations Marketers and Sales teams cannot agree on what a ‘qualified lead’ is. Marketing, if it is measured on success, might claim that a contact form submission enquiring about a product or service is a ‘lead’, while sales, the team that undertakes the investigation, would argue that, to be qualified, the lead might need to have allocated an appropriate budget, an expressed need that the product or service resolves and the decision maker standing by with his pen unholstered.
Which approach is right?
I’d argue neither.
In a company with a sales philosophy, the sales team approach will overrule the other; the sales team focuses on their targets and will only accept leads that best support their need to achieve target, lesser leads that require effort become a distraction.
In a company that is product focused might have more leniency towards the Marketer, allowing them to qualify all expressions of interest. Great for the Marketer, not so great for the sales as more time is spent syphoning out the leads more likely to convert.
So what is the right approach?
The survey, undertaken by a predictive intelligence service, suggests that greater insight in to the behaviour of a lead’s interaction with your website allows you to define what a qualified lead actually is. For me, this doesn’t fully solve the Marketer’s challenge; they still need to acquire web visitors in the first place!
“Data allows the marketer to know its customer better and to become more effective.”
What might solve the challenge is for Marketing to own the data processes and capture everything. Creating one reservoir for information will allow Marketers to know their customer better, to understand, yes, the website behaviour but this alongside the campaign drivers that attract visitors, and then to link this lead acquisition information with the CRM data to identify what channels generate ‘successful’ leads, as adjudged by sales revenue. And the data collection should continue beyond the customer acquisition stage in to lifetime value, bringing in customer satisfaction metrics, customer support logs and more.
A Marketer with more data can prove more effective. Through using data to know your customer better, Marketers can attract more likely prospects, sales teams, in turn get to work on more qualified opportunities. And everyone is happy.
Headway Marketing assists businesses with the process of knowing your customer in order to get more profitable and effective sales. If you are looking for business growth and need external input to get started, please get in touch:
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