Most marketing teams are running a variety of great demand generation programs, generating lots of leads that unfortunately aren’t closing. The majority of those marketing leads never close because they really aren’t given a chance to — by marketing or by sales. The main reason is that the leads are either passed too early or too late. They get rejected or sent back to marketing, who become dismayed that all their hard work has yielded very little return.
For marketing, the key is to adopt a “less is more” approach, says Fergus Gloster, managing director of Europe for marketing automation provider Marketo. His suggestions:
• Determine and agree with your sales team what a sales lead actually is.
• Build a funnel that shows the complete flow from name to prospect to lead to opportunity.
• Agree on the ownership and responsibility for each part of the funnel.
• Implement a scoring system that will allow you to align the behavior of the potential lead with your agreed goal of passing only qualified leads to sales.
• Develop nurturing strategies and content to nurture suspects to become prospects to become leads etc. This doesn’t have to cost lots of money, often more brain power than budget.
• Only pass those leads that meet the agreed criteria from marketing to sales.
• In return for only passing those sales-ready leads, get assurances from sales that those leads will be followed-up promptly and agree on acceptable timeframes (e.g. service level agreements, or SLAs).
You will be passing fewer “leads” to sales (but you weren’t passing real leads before), Gloster says. Using this lead generation strategy will convert opportunities at a much higher rate. Even if your sales team maintains its historical close rates, you will have more deals closed from fewer leads.
