Solution to perennial leads quality problem

We often come across companies that have invested considerable sums on good looking marketing programs etched in detailed PowerPoint slides that are backed up by detailed spreadsheets. These detailed programs promise and many times deliver on a huge amount of ‘leads’. The thinking is x amount of contacts generate y amount of interests that convert into z amount of leads which translates into revenue streams.

This seems normal and generally acceptable except one problem, this approach fails more often than anyone cares to admit. This brings us to the the fundamental problem faced by marketers, let’s call it the Leads Incertitude Problem.

What’s this Leads Incertitude problem and How will that help?

With Demand Generation and therefore sufficient quantity of high quality leads remain the core deliverables of most organizations, its important for marketing to reach a common understanding on what is a lead. This is more difficult than it looks.

Sales would always want to speak to a decision maker who is convinced about our value preposition and wants to immediately spend money on our solutions. Engineering would want to speak to a team who have evaluated our products against the competition and are convinced about the feature compatibility to their current ecosystem. The CEO/COO will always want a healthy pipeline and a good visibility on conversions.

To achieve this goal, marketing must generate the common understanding on the following:

• What constitutes a lead.
• How is it different from a contact / inquiry.
• What are the qualification criteria.
• What are the steps that marketing need to take to make prospects graduate to the next level.
• At what point, can we consider a lead good enough to be handed over to sales.

Achievement of this understanding requires multiple rounds of reviews preferably over executive management, sales, marketing and engineering workshop spanning 2 days (our recommend method). At the end of the workshop, we gain absolute clarity and commonly accepted understanding on the following:

1. Definition of a contact, inquiry and a lead.
2. Involvement of various teams (Engineers, Inside Sales) and their role in sales process.
3. Handoff between marketing and sales.
4. Marketing Demand Generation goals that will form the basis of GTM plans

For the processes of marketing to be successful, it is critical that the goals are clear and unequivocal and once the goals are clear, the marketing machine must be allowed to run without operational intervention.

With clarity of direction and the ability to create a high performance B2B engine your marketing team will be able to drive much higher efficiency and effectiveness, and your executive team and sales organization will be able to measure performance more analytically.

When our customers outsource their marketing execution to us, we, after conferring with the management team, summarize and agree on the business goals, budgets, and sales expectations with the marketing team. Armed with the knowledge acquired during the workshop and our experience, we develop a plan that deeply engages a targeted market and build, innovate, deliver and execute a world class buyers journey based program.

This buyer-focused process that progresses and tracks the prospects through the stages of the unique B2B buying journey, results in the highest quality of qualified leads at the lowest cost in the fastest possible time.

Want to know more, speak to one of experts.