Common Mistakes in the Marketing-to-Sales Lead Process and How to Avoid Them

    Common Mistakes in the Marketing-to-Sales Lead Process and How to Avoid Them

    by | Business Trends, Inbound Business, Selling

    The marketing-to-sales lead process should be simple.

    Marketing generates quality leads, sales happily accept them, deals close, the MQL to SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) conversion rate is almost 100%, and everything is terrific, right? WRONG!

    If marketing holds onto every lead until they are sure it’s a lock-down SQL, bad things happen, like:

    • Losing your selling window. Remember, buyers are in control. They buy on their timeframe, not yours. Wait too long, and the buyer will be locked into another vendor or on to another project.
    • Losing out on promising leads. Qualifying leads isn’t an exact science.   Marketing can err on the conservative side – knowing that some good leads might not get to sales (what we in the marketing demand gen world call a “False Negative”), or marketing can be more aggressive knowing sales will get some “False Positives”.

    For those not familiar with the term, a False Positive would be a lead that appears to be sales-ready by displaying buying behavior, such as watching demos, looking at pricing, or downloading RFP templates, but in fact, they are still just researching.

    Most companies will accept “False Positives” to rapidly get sales leads, provided it doesn’t get out of hand.  I recently talked to one CEO who saw a 90% MQL rejection rate, meaning that only 1 out of 10 leads was sales-ready. Now, that’s out-of-hand, although it’s not uncommon.

    So, what’s the right MQL to SQL conversion rate? Today’s best practices hover around 60%. Get close to this, and you should likely be feeling pretty good. But to get the full story, you need to be looking at a bunch of other metrics (metrics that a sound closed-loop marketing automation/CRM system should be able to cough up quickly), such as:

    • % of MQLs resolved – meaning the rep could reach the prospect and conduct a discovery call. Somehow, the best reps always seem to have the highest percentage, but there can be other reasons for varying rates. For example, my tele-qualifiers passed MQLs over at one point without setting appointments, as the reps wanted to own their calendars. With this process, we only got a 30% resolved rate and a 15% MQL conversion rate. Once the tele-qualifiers started to schedule meetings, the resolution and MQL conversion rates tripled.
    • % of MQLs disqualified with lousy info (bad contact info, the wrong role, not being employed at a company, the company not in the right region, size, etc.). This number should be low, but it is important to watch to ensure the demand generation process is aligned correctly. For example, perhaps a marketing list was created with companies that are too small or a tele-qualifier misunderstanding the qualification criteria.
    • % of MQLs returned to marketing for nurturing (right company type and role but doesn’t fully meet MQL definition). In other words, these are your “False Positives” and at some point, down the road, through nurturing efforts, they hopefully will be ready to buy.

    These metrics can differ by marketing campaign, region, and sales rep, so understanding them helps both marketing and sales adjust behavior and improve conversion rates. What trends are you seeing in your company?

    About the Author

    Jeff Whitney is a B2B software marketing executive with extensive experience  –  from early-stage start-ups to achieving marketing equity.   Jeff has a passion for building a world-class marketing function, starting with the organization, demand generation programs, sales enablement tools, and aligning sales and marketing.

    Understanding Buyer Personas: The Key to Effective Marketing and Sales Alignment

    Understanding Buyer Personas: The Key to Effective Marketing and Sales Alignment

    by | Business Strategy, Leadership, Selling

    In my first post on sales and marketing alignment, I shared a demand generation alignment checklist I’ve created and have continually refined over many years of marketing with many high-growth software companies.

    Here, I’ll dive into the first two items of the checklist:

    1. Get marketing ready by understanding the buyer persona, the buying cycle, and the competitive landscape. And make sure you know the differences by region and distribution channel. Interviewing the sales team (sales reps, SEs, etc.) and answering sales calls helps greatly. Also, interview partners and customers, including ones who have just bought. This process can take months and be quite formal, but you can get started quick ‘n dirty in days. The bottom line is this: marketing can’t play an effective alignment role unless they understand and help create a structure for the buying process.
    2. Create a Marketing Qualified LEAD (MQL) definition. Not all leads are the same. Marketing creates leads in many ways –email campaigns, the website, webinars, trade shows, etc. An MQL is a lead that marketing has qualified and is passing to sales as having a high probability of converting to a Sales Opportunity. But, defining an MQL may not be nearly as simple as it seems. It requires understanding the maturity stage for each of your products and then educating and getting the revenue team’s agreement on the type of lead that best maps to that product stage. It also requires mapping leads to target geographic regions, company size, prospect job roles, etc.

    You’ll need some patience here – both in understanding the MQL concept and getting agreement. The lead definition concepts are new to most people, and they’ll need time and education to overcome historical biases.

    Check out Sirius Decisions’ research on Demand Types. They’ve been thought leaders in this area for years and have excellent reports. I’ve successfully used their research and analysts to help educate and select the proper lead definitions for my company’s products.

    Historically, sales teams want BANT (Budget – Authority – Need – Timeframe) leads. And what salesperson wouldn’t? However, BANT leads work best in replacement markets (think toner, paper, office furniture, and other commodity-like products), where buyers already have the product, have the budget to buy more, and often buy on price or convenience. However, the replacement market is a tough one, and most companies don’t want their products in this category.

    Fortunately, most software products fall into the New Paradigm category, where the product performs a function differently and hopefully better than previous solutions. But, because it’s a new approach, waiting until the buyer has BANT is not a good idea. Wait that long, and competitors have likely guided them to that point, and you’re just sales fodder. New Paradigm leads map better to prospects with Need and Interest. Sales reps may resist, but Sirius Decisions research shows that in this market, you’ll get more leads if you focus on Need and Interest, and that opportunities will close at a higher rate and for more money than waiting for BANT leads.

    The third type of software product market is the New Concept. New Concept products address a problem that most buyers must be aware of. Wait around for BANT or even Need and Interest in this market, and your sales team will have lots of free time. You want to find people in specific target markets who can sponsor change for New Concept products.

    If you’re unsure of what category a product falls under, take a quick survey of sales reps and other members of the revenue team to clarify key questions in the buying process.

    A note of caution: if you have multiple product lines, they could fall into different market categories. Training teams to qualify one product on BANT and another on Interest and Need, for example, is difficult, but it’s necessary.

    Once you identify the correct lead definition, you must educate and convince the sales team. Marketing can carry most of the education load, but sales management must take ownership of the convincing. It will take group and individual discussions and then monitoring to ensure compliance.

    About the author: Jeff Whitney is a B2B software marketing executive with extensive experience  –  from early-stage start-ups to achieving marketing equity. Jeff has a passion for building a world-class marketing function, starting with the organization, demand generation programs, sales enablement tools, and aligning sales and marketing.