"I’m frustrated with marketing.  I don’t know how we decide to allocate our investments and I don’t understand what we are getting in return."  This was the lament of a $100 million B2B company CEO that I spoke with recently.  This CEO observed a lot of activity but was inherently uncomfortable with his inability to understand what the benefit to the firm was from all of the spending and activity. This CEO is not alone.

Unfortunately, many marketers shoot themselves in the proverbial foot by failing to provide transparency and context to their activities and results.  My article, Marketing Misunderstood, explores this concept in more detail and offers some practical solutions for management teams to consider.  Today however, my focus is on ideas to improve improving qualified lead generation by suggesting a set of Lead Management Processes that help organizations understand their leads from initial contact through closure.

My suggestions:

  • Qualified Lead Generation should be tracked as an important part of the marketing and sales KPIs.  The quantity of raw contacts, qualified contacts and "leads" should be visible to the broader management team in operations reviews or on demand.  Ideally, the marketing and sales leaders have shared accountability for "total pipeline metrics" which includes qualified lead growth.
  • There must be a clear lead qualification process with distinct criteria for how to categorize each contact.  The sales team owns the definition of the lead qualification criteria.  Sales and marketing must collaborate to define the qualification and disposition process.  The sales team must incorporate the lead process into their sales process model. I encourage teams to establish a few very distinct categories for what makes something qualified or not.  Highly qualified leads must have a reasonable probability of closing in the near term, while an entry-level qualified lead might be the beginning stages of a long-term project.  Someone seeking information through a web site is a contact until proven guilty of having a legitimate, funded need.
  • A formal lead qualification function that manages the individual contacts is inexpensive to establish and essential for success. The "Qualifying Reps" own every contact and are responsibly for initial classification and communication with the assigned sales representative.  If a lead is classified, it moves into the sales-lead pipeline and out of the qualifying pipeline.  If a sales rep determines otherwise, it comes back to the Qualifying rep for incubation and management over time.  Every contact must have an owner that is responsible for watching and managing the contact, and ideally, moving it along to the next step in the qualification process. (Article reference: Increase Sales and Marketing with a Formal Lead Qualification Program.)  Note: most firms pass leads through from an Information Center–this is wholly ineffective.
  • Every promotions program results in some form of activity or response.  The inquiries and contacts should flow through the system as described in the above processes, with reporting systems set up to track the number of contacts in each qualifying step, the change in numbers from month to month, the age of the contacts, and the outcome from specific campaigns.  Additionally, once the leads move from contact to qualified and are owned by a sales representative, similar metrics should be tracked by each rep, with the rep’s ultimate responsibility of closing the lead through a win. 

The CEO’s very real lament above is in part, created by not having a view into the types of activities and metrics described in this posting.  Establishing clear processes for managing contacts and viewing and valuing the changing number of contacts and leads over time is one way to improve visibility into how marketing is contributing to the business.  The collaboration between sales and marketing serves as a check and balance  for the process and the numbers and ensures that marketers take their lead generation seriously and that sales associates understand their role in following through on those leads.  Widespread communication of the metrics across sales, marketing and senior management helps ensure a focus on driving results, improving campaign effectiveness and ensuring proper and timely follow=through on leads.  A definite win-win-win for all groups.