Why Leads Die

Think about a typical B2B organization, your organization perhaps. Imagine you’re facing increased financial pressure, increased scrutiny from above into your spend and performance, and numbers just aren’t quite what they should be. Now if you’re like most organizations, the finger-pointing between Sales and Marketing is probably heating up. On the one hand, Sales is demanding better leads—how can they hit their numbers without quality leads in the pipeline? On the other hand is Marketing wondering, how they can be expected to measure and improve lead performance if a large portion of them just get dumped?

The issue of alignment between Sales and Marketing is a constant. But when you think about the resources invested in lead gen, scoring, nurturing, and additional qualification steps, the lack of alignment becomes a huge financial liability. Each lead is a financial investment and unfortunately many of them end up being ignored, then forgotten, never to be seen again.

While almost everyone understands that alignment is important and beneficial—it can feel like a hopeless task. What exactly is the cause of a “misalignment” and where do you even start in trying to fix it? CEB Marketing Leadership Council, our sister program for marketing professionals, recently launched a poll to find out from Sales and Marketing, why some leads aren’t followed up on and how to fix it. Not surprisingly, the two functions had some differences of opinion.

Interestingly, both Sales and Marketing seem to agree that information transparency could be better. Marketers generally assume that having more customer information will make Sales more inclined to follow up. But what Marketers clearly underappreciate, is that Sales often wants to know why Marketing considers a lead valuable or sales-ready. While it may seem like a subtle distinction, giving sales the right type of information could be relatively easy and make a big difference to follow-up.

However, information transparency is just one of the many facets of a larger alignment issues facing Sales and Marketing. At the end of the day, it’s not enough to produce better leads; you have to effectively position those leads in a way that makes sense to your reps.

CEB Sales Members, read more on how high performers shape demand early in the sales funnel. Also, learn how to qualify opportunities based on emerging demand potential.

This is a guest post by Katie Castagna of the CEB Marketing Leadership Council, our sister program for marketing professionals. We’ve modified it a bit for a sales audience. Visit the original here!