According to a study by SiriusDecisions, 52% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their #1 problem. As an agency specializing in both online and traditional lead generation campaigns, that’s nice to hear.
But when you talk to them, they’re actually struggling something entirely different. Almost without exception, when you talk to marketing VPs about what they’re really trying to solve, it has nothing to do with generating more leads or even improving the quality of the leads they generate:
- “I don’t know what happens to the leads I give the sales force.”
- “I can’t tell what sources generate the best quality leads.”
- “My salespeople/my channel don’t follow up on the leads I give them.”
- “My salespeople want all the leads in their territories, but there’s really too many for them to pursue.”
- “My CRM system doesn’t work.”
- “My conversion rates of leads to opportunities is inconsistent/too low.”
When I meet with sales and marketing VPs at companies both large and small, they are plagued with sales and marketing integration issues. More than anything, sales process issues, and the handoff of leads from marketing to sales, is the paramount challenge B2B companies face today, and their recession has only exacerbated that problem. It’s not that we don’t have enough leads; in truth, we’re just not doing a good job of finding the diamonds in the rough, converting them to opportunities, managing the process, and tracking the results, so we know what works and what doesn’t. Seems simple. And some of us even admit it, according to the SiriusDecisions report, where 10% of marketers did in fact admit that “sales process issues” were their #1 concern. So now that the emperor’s lack of clothes has been revealed, that creating more leads and more leads isn’t the ultimate objective, what to do? Three steps:
1. Conduct detailed sales process interviews with both customers and salespeople to uncover how the process is working, and identify gaps
2. Re-engineer the process in collaborative sessions with sales and marketing decision-makers
3. Install/retrain/re-engineer marketing automation and CRM systems in order to accurately track and report back on lead generation and sales conversion activities.
I didn’t say three simple steps. This is hard work, which is why so few companies really solve it. It’s not a question of lead flow, or technology, talent, personalities or boundary issues between sales and marketing. It’s all of the above. Get to work.
