Lead Management
October 24th, 2006 | Marilou BarsamIn order to prove success, marketers often need to recognize different buckets and show levels of values for each bucket of leads.
MarketingSherpa published a report interviewing B to B Marketers on how they handle leads on the back end.
The first question they ask, Do you recommend that the sales team be able to see all leads marketing gets in.. or do you think you should only allow them to access the best, most sales ready leads? How do you handle your leads?
October 28th, 2006 at 6:49 pm
We’ve all been through those terrible back-in-forths where sales tells marketing ‘these leads are all terrible, but keep giving us more of them.’ Before handing leads off to sales, marketing should scrub them and get rid of the clear non-starters.
Beyond that, what to do with the leads may depend on the structure and philosophy of your sales force. Do you separate hunters from gatherers? Is their an inside sales group that works early leads? Do your sales people have the time to work raw leads? Do they incorporate this type of pursuit into their schedules?
How to handle leads, what qualifies a lead, etc., needs to be worked out between sales and marketing. Theoretically, this should get rid of some of the negative-back-and-forth over leads.
October 30th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Definitely do not give all the leads to sales. All your hard marketing work will be wasted if you do so. Sales people will not follow-up on all those leads you give them unless they know they’re hot and worth following up. The worst case is they’ll let them go cold and all your work will be for naught.