How Many Crappy Leads Will You Allow to Be Generated This Year?

Jon Miller, CMO of Demandbase, recently wrote this post: Revamp Your B2B Playbook for Smarter Marketing. The title is an understatement as what Jon is calling for is more a revolution than evolution.

In the blog Jon writes: “With all the new tools at our disposal and a wide variety of channels designed to reach prospects, you would think B2B marketing would be easier than ever. But most marketers would agree the opposite is true. In fact, when I talk to CMOs, I hear that it feels harder than ever to create pipeline and achieve business goals, especially when budgets (and teams) are tight.” Jon Miller, March 13, 2023, CMSWIRE

I have always been a Jon Miller fan. I feel the work he did with Engagio, the company he founded after Marketo, described and guided marketers toward the purest form of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) that has ever, and probably will ever, exist. One of the reasons CMOs are finding it “harder than ever to create pipelines” is that they have tried to “mechanize” every aspect of marketing. In my opinion, marketing transformation (AKA: marketing technology stacks that over-promise and under-deliver), has made it possible to get more bad leads to sales faster than ever before.

I was talking to a VP of sales for a software company earlier this week and he told me that during a recent quarterly business review meeting, marketing proudly reported that they had generated 250 leads for this sales vice president’s team last quarter.

My contact responded that sales had, in fact, followed up on the 250 leads and just two of them were marginally qualified. Marketing defended its position by saying that the leads had met the ideal customer profile but acknowledged that no other qualifying criteria was applied between when the so-called leads were generated and when they were delivered to sales.

Unforgiveable, Predictable. Typical. Worst yet, it must also be forgettable because the same thing has been going on for years and no one is doing anything about it. It makes my blood boil.

 Why is it all right to send crappy leads to sales. When is it all right for sales to ignore leads?

I know why. Marketing is required to send more leads at a lower cost each year.

Sales, you know the guys that do what you pay them to do not what you want them to do, will not follow-up on leads because their perception is that most the time the leads suck.

Do you know what? They do. This is like the weather. Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

To amplify this: per Jon Miller, “In the old B2B playbook, marketing would now pass the ‘lead’ over to sales to continue the journey into an active buying cycle. But we can no longer rely on the traditional handoff between marketing and sales, as if the buyer journey was a linear relay race.”

Of course, we cannot, but we do. That is why in 2023 we still hear sales say, “the leads suck” and marketing says, “sales never follows-up on our leads.”

There is a way to fix this. This blog calls for a solution called “the judicial branch” which involves setting up a committee of senior-level sales and marketing execs, as well as the CEO. This committee reviews every lead that sales ignores or rejects and determines whether the lead does or does not fit the agreed-upon definition of a lead. This blog also covers the “how” around establishing lead criteria that works, and the “what” to do when teams go off track.

“The primary reason the existing playbook is not working is buyer indifference. Buyers have become numb from being bombarded by the same tactics.”  (Jon Miller)

Jon goes on to say: it is “not about getting a person to click, or download your e-book, or any of the traditional calls to action. Arguably your ad should not even have a button to click. These ads should connect at the emotional level and engage the buyer’s reptilian brain to stimulate fear around the types of problems you can solve and feelings of trust and safety for your company.”

There are two areas where I disagree with Jon: The jury is still out on the value and validity of “intent.” Too, marketers are spending way too much time and money on ad campaigns that fail to deliver revenue results. As Jon states in the blog, “Success here means dropping traditional B2B demand generation metrics such as cost-per-click and cost-per-lead.”  

Absolutely, Jon. Do not forget that there is a role for old fashioned calls, voicemails and other one-to-one efforts – but I am preaching to the choir. You invented fishing with a spear instead of a net. I just wished more people would listen to you.

I can help you convert marketing spend into revenue.  Email me (dan.mcdade@prospect-experience.com or call me at 770-262-9021 to get started.