COMMENTS
I think it is great that marketing is taking more of a role of gathering qualified leads for the Sales Department. This is happening in a very few companies.
But anyone who has been in Sales a good period of time knows that there is more to closing a sale then just be handed a qualified lead.
Even if Sales is given a 100 qualified leads I wonder what the percentage of those lead close?
The number is going to be better then 100 cold call leads. Yes. But there are still issues (price, product and how your features fit into the clients marketing plans).
Is this just Sales fault if all 100 qualified leads don't buy? Of course not.
Again it is great some (and this is a small percentage) of Marketing Departments are handing over qualified leads to Sales.
But even if they did Sales didn't close all the leads is that totaly Sales fault?
John, thanks for joining the conversation! The point I was getting at is that sales and marketing need to partner to be successful. There should be no finger pointing...only an integrated strategy that drives optimal results. A "no fault" situation so to speak.
Is it okay for me to say that "this is an awesome post"? I feel a bit vain saying that since it looks like I played a part in inspiring it.
But, I appreciate you guys carrying the torch on your blog. I know you guys live and breathe this stuff for yourselves. I'm really glad to see it get aired on your blog.
I think John is right that very few marketing organizations actually contribute to qualified lead generation for their sales team.
But, if they don't start figuring it out, I think they should be canned. The world is changing. The best prospects are searching, browsing and asking their contacts (through linkedin, etc) about what solutions to use. If your marketing and sales teams aren't getting you visibility there, you have less opportunities to talk to interested prospects and close deals.
The world is definitely changing and marketing and sales have the opportunity to collaborate like they never did before. Smart sales and marketing pros are figuring that out now.
Peter has a post on the Hubspot blog (http://tinyurl.com/5n49b9) titled 5 Steps for Successful Social Media Marketing. My original thought after reading this post is that the steps should be taken by Marketing, but after reading Trish's post, the steps in Peter's post should be done by both Sales and Marketing together. Great insight!
I agree, David.
Sales and marketing should both be using social media effectively.
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Trish: good post. I must confess that I've never seen a pipeline owned by marketing. However, I do believe that Marketing has a responsibility to fill the pipeline. Marketing and Sales need to work together to make sure that only qualified leads make it into the pipeline. Just like John said, 100 leads does not mean that you have 100 customers....
- Dr. Jim Anderson
The Accidental Negotiator Blog "Learn The Secrets of Side-By-Side Negotiating To Get The Most Value Out Of Every Negotiation"
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Wow, thanks for your nice great tips here
Guys , I have worked both the dark and the light side , you are on the right track but I believe you need to develop it further. So long as there is an "us and them" mindset in sales and marketing there will not be much progress. Marketing can develop as many leads as they want but until sales feeds back on the progress of the calls and further develops and defines the ideal leads required, the previous scenarios described apply. Sales and marketing especially below the line need to work together to define demand generation strategies and constantly learn and improve them.
After all as a salesman I lived for well qualified leads. In marketing I need o know what defines a well qualified lead.
I trust I make sense, feel free to contact me for further discussions.
Trish,
It's great to hear the "shared responsibility" message from you - I've been promoting thjios message for some time now to my clients in the UK and I do believe that more and more companies have bought into the message.
The tougher question I've had to grapple with recently is how to measure the effectiveness of Sales and the effectiveness of Marketing - without double counting and without setting Sales against Marketing.
Brian
Achieve Sales Ltd
It is helpful to look at the sales pipeline in segments. The wider early part of the pipeline is primarily the responsibility of marketing, as the lead becomes more and more qualified and moves down the pipleine, it moves into the purveiw of the sales department. The actual sale is almost completely the responsibility of the sales department.
In effective organizations, a well funded marketing department will generate qualified leads, a certain percentage of which will turn into sales opportunities, a certain percentage of which will turn into sales. It has been my experience that turning 10% of your qualified leads into actual sales (be advised I work in a business to business sales model) is doing extremely well.
I find it helpful to look at the stats that Sirius Decisions and others have been publishing the last few years. Using 1000 new "inquiries" as the starting point, let's look at the difference between the a company with an average marketing and sales team vs one that is market leading:
Avg Best
Inquiries 1000 1000
MQL 50 100
Closed 3 14
This is just the abbreviated stats from the last SD study earlier this year. They key takeaways are that market leading companies with well established marketing <> sales lead qualification processes are able to:
1. Deliver double the number of MQLs (market qualified leads) than average firms
2. Close over 4x the number of deals from the original 1000 inquiries.
What this shows is that for most B2B companies, their problem is not at generating more leads at the top of the funnel. Its about marketing and sales working together to execute processes through the funnel. No finger pointing, no "us" vs "them". Just collaborating to understand what a sales-ready opportunity looks and acts like and evolving the qualification and nurturing processes until they work right.
It takes leadership from both the marketing and sales chiefs to make it happen. But the numbers don't lie about why companies should focus on making alignment and collaboration happen.
Henry Bruce
@hebruce