CEOs don’t care about leads. They care about revenue. Consequently, the relationship between marketing and sales is often nothing short of mayhem.
This is the final in our series, “Five Reasons CEOs Should Care About Leads (and databases, content, social media, cost per lead and marketing ROI) and How To Fix What Is Broken.” So far we have covered Data, Metrics that Matter, Persistence, and Calibrating Results. In this final edition, we circle back to the heart of the matter and what matters most to CEOs: revenue.
Reason #5: A 100% Surefire Way to Increase Revenue
Marketing Advocate’s 2014 Lead Generation Benchmark Survey reports that, “Improving the quality and increasing the quantity of leads generated are top objectives for companies of all sizes.” While this has been the trend for some years now, I would argue that in many (if not just about all) companies, lead quality has weakened while lead quantity has increased. What’s the use of sending more poor-quality leads to sales faster than ever before?
Previously in this series, I wrote that a “Judicial Branch” needs to be in place to ensure effective lead management. This is not a function that most companies have. If your company is an exception to the rule, congratulations. For the rest of you, here is how it works:
The purpose of the judicial branch is to:
- Establish a unified lead definition that is agreed upon by both marketing and sales.
- Ensure that the leads passed to sales by marketing meet the lead criteria
- Proactively manage leads that are:
- Passed back to marketing as unqualified to make sure that the lead was fairly evaluated and effectively worked.
- Passively accepted but not worked on by sales.
This cannot be done by lower level staffers from marketing and sales. It’s a task that needs to be done by executive management. Effective use of this process will answer the following:
- What percent of leads passed by marketing to sales meet the lead criteria?
- How many high quality leads are being sent to sales?
- What is the percent of high quality leads being sent to sales compared to the number they need to make quota?
- How effective is sales at qualifying those leads and getting them into the forecast?
CEOs care about revenue—that’s a fact. But they are paying a lot of money for leads. Shouldn’t they care about them?