Never Ever EVER pass these leads to sales!
Posted by
Chris Lang on Thu, Apr 07, 2024 @ 05:00 PM
An issue that comes in between the usually tender and caring relationship that sales and marketing has with each other is that of confidence in the other group. To clarify: sales has little confidence that marketing will deliver leads that actually have a pulse and marketing has little confidence that sales can close a lead even if that lead has an active initiative and blank check in hand. From a sales standpoint, it only takes a couple of bad leads to turn us against a particular lead source. We make our money bringing in revenue. Bad leads not only don’t close, but they waste time that we could have used working on an actual deal. Here are a couple of leads that will turn off sales in a hurry.
Unqualified/low qualified Leads: Here is the scenario, you run a webinar series and from a marketing standpoint it is wildly successful. You had a ton of people show up and attendees (other than the ones you planted) actually participated. You proudly deliver that list to sales and we then take it, swear a bit under our breath, cherry pick a couple of titles and put the rest in the trash.
Why do we not like this list? Because its hand filled with hand raisers not sales opportunities. People sign up for webinars for all different reasons. You can get hundreds of attendees, but only a couple of actual opportunities. Sales runs by the motto of close something this month or you’re screwed. We simply don’t have the time to prospect through a bunch of hand raisers so we take what we think will lead to business in the shortest timeframe and “back burner” (code for never call) the rest. Qualify marketing leads before you ship them to sales. Otherwise you are at risk for wasting a lot of effort on your demand generation programs.
Nurtured Leads: If a lead needs to be nurtured it is not a sales lead, it is a marketing lead. Sales generally doesn’t have time to nurture leads so we put them on the back burner (see above reference) where they eventually get lost in the shuffle slip through the cracks. I am going to ignore the prospect that can purchase in 3 months if I need revenue this month. Marketing would be much better served nurturing prospects until they are active buyers. Otherwise you’re wasting leads that would be awesome in the future for the satisfaction of passing now. While passing the lead may look great, it won’t lead to closed business and will lead to sales pushback.
The Chaff: The chaff is the person that isn’t qualified, but for one reason or another they still want to talk to sales. Some people want to hear what the latest and greatest solutions are. They may not be a fit, have no budget, no need for the solution and no authority to purchase even if there were budget and a need. Yet they would like to talk to sales so the marketing rep passes them on simply because the person asked and they don’twant to say no. This lead then goes to sales and is a terrible waste of time. Sales looks to marketing to not only create leads for them, but also to filter out leads that have no potential. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
Handing a sales rep leads that don’t go anywhere kills the confidence in that lead source.We won’t use your leads if they don’t offer us the best chance of hitting our number.
Provide us with the best option and we will use it.