Business Management

Earlier today, I was working on another post (ie not this one). I spent a bit of time on getting my words just right and so on. It was getting kind of long, so I re-read the post to do some editing. And realized that after a number of paragraphs, I hadn’t gotten to the point, and even worse, it was just ****ing boring. I had shed no new light on my subject, and my post bored me. I can only imagine how dreadfully dull all of you would have found it.

So, you are spared my boring post.

Instead I am going to write about leads! Over the past couple of weeks, a few of my favorite sales/marketing bloggers have written some thoughtful posts about leads. Here’s a sampling:

• Qualified lead programs need to be trashed (Jim Logan)
• A lead generation fable (Brian Carroll)
• Do you have thirsty sales people (Dana VanDen Heuvel)

You know you’ve read a good post when it REALLY gets you thinking, and these three posts, well, they led to this post 🙂

Leads are the lifeblood of every business, and the source of more misunderstandings, confusion and strife between sales and marketing teams than just about ANY OTHER issue in the business. And the sad truth is, all it takes to avoid the battles is a well thought out integrated lead program. So why don’t more companies do this? Quite a while ago, I suggested some reasons why this is so, and promised to go into more detail in a follow-up post.

Well, two months later, here we are. As clearly as I can, without a whiteboard and visual aids, I am going to give you a model for lead rating and nurturing that delivers the filtered leads (without the crap) that Brian and Dana referred to in their posts. And will end the sales/marketing war….

First Step: Definitions and Responsibilities.  It is marketing’s job to identify, qualify and nurture sales prospects to the point where the prospect becomes a sales lead. Sales then takes over and is responsible for converting the lead into a sale. So you say! Seems simple, how come we have so much confusion?

Diagnosis:

• We don’t have a clear, unambiguous, agreed definition of PROSPECT and LEAD.
• We don’t have a clearly defined "hand-off" point. Things shift around depending on how busy the sales team is or how much budget is available for telemarketing this quarter.
• We don’t have a clear, tested process for nurturing leads, from mild interest to avid adopter. So, it is feast or famine for the sales team, depending on how well a particular lead gen program did this week in generating folks that are ready to buy.

Second Step: Stop doing all that bad stuff in my diagnosis. Instead:

1. Implement a lead rating system. Your sales and marketing teams KNOW how to define a qualified lead and a qualified prospect. Put them together and have them develop a lead rating system that can be applied to all incoming prospects. The lead rating should be based on three basic parameters, although it may require more than three questions to accurately define this for your business.

   Some people like the MAN model, Money – Authority – Need. I prefer Budget – Timeframe – Decisionmaker (Need is assumed by the fact that the prospect responded to an offer, and the more important dimension to surface is the Timeframe of the purchase.) 

   But it doesn’t matter which of these you prefer – pick one and develop the lead rating questions for your business that will let you classify your prospects appropriately.

2. Build a mathematical model that classifies leads as A, B, C and D based on your important parameters. Using my preferred Budget, Timeframe, Decisionmaker model, A leads are the hot leads, with budget, immediate timeframe, and the prospect is the decisionmaker. B leads typically have a longer timeframe.

   C and D are prospects — they typically are missing some key ingredient in the mix, or have a much longer timeframe. And they shouldn’t go to your sales people. Cs and Ds should be nurtured in marketing.

   There is a lot of detail in this process, more than I want to go into here. If you are interested, please feel free to drop me an e-mail at sgetgood@getgood.com. I’d love to talk leads with you.

3. Use your model to assign A and B leads to sales people, and C and D prospects to marketing. Sales focuses on converting hot lead to sales and marketing works on nurturing longer term prospects into leads.

Step Three: Nurture prospects. This is where companies usually miss. They may do the work of classifying leads, but they don’t assign the responsibilities appropriately. Everything goes to sales, even the folks who aren’t ready to buy. Somehow, the company imagines that all the prospect needs is to talk to our excellent sales reps and they’ll cut the PO. Wrong. In fact, it may do more damage to put a prospect in the sales queue. If all you want is to start the conversation, you really don’t want someone trying to close you.

Depending on your product set, you could have a simple or complex lead nurturing process. The key: make sure your prospect is engaged by, and engaging with, the appropriate folks in your sales/marketing team at the appropriate points in the sales cycle.

Leads to sales, prospects to marketing, clear definitions, and a clear handoff point.

Much better than bitching about lead quality or bad conversion rates, isn’t it?