Lead Handling Stinks. Here Are Three Things to Do About It.
Sales reps have been conditioned to expect poor-quality leads from marketing.
Marketing complains that sales reps do not follow-up on leads, and they complain that sales reps never provide feedback on a lead-by-lead basis.
These statements make people angry, and they are at the crux of why lead development and handling waste a lot of money.
It doesn’t have to be this way. And it is not rocket-science to fix it.
Would you sleep better tonight if you knew within 30 days that your company would stop leaking leads (and money)?
Here are several actions you can take:
1. Create a playbook for sales with lead definitions, and what to do with leads that are not qualified.
2. Provide a process for sales reps to use for following up on leads.
3. Communicate what will happen once a lead is returned to marketing and how it might eventually be returned to sales.
Playbook
Marketing needs to develop a training guide for sales that defines what a lead is (as mutually agreed upon by marketing and sales.)
If sales reps receive a lead that is, in their estimation, not qualified, this guide outlines the process for returning the lead and what will happen to that lead.
The communication around this process is broken in most companies. It is not impossible to fix, but it will take executive management focus. Sadly, the only thing executives hate more than talking about leads is talking about databases.
Process for Lead Follow-up
In the same guide, marketing should suggest a process to sales for following up on a lead.
Frequently, sales reps give up on leads after just one or two phone calls. If they report to marketing at all on lead status, they simply say “I called twice, and they did not call me back so they must not have been a lead.” Most of the time there is NO communication between marketing and sales on lead status.
Sales reps often underestimate the time it takes to close a lead and give up too soon. They feel that if a sales deal is going to occur that it will happen in just a few months. These statistics tell the true story:
The chart shows that sales reps act on the premise that the buying process is front-end loaded while in fact a consistent percentage of leads buy month after month after month. The problem is that sales reps give up early and win only a small percentage of the possible deals they are handed—wasting a significant portion of marketing’s investment.
Helping sales reps understand actual vs. assumed buyer behavior in B2B sales environments will help alter how they approach and stay on top of leads over time—and helps them be more successful and make more money. Remember, sales reps do what you pay them to do, not what you want them to do.
Lead Hand-off (Both Ways)
Communicate how a lead will be handled if it is passed back to marketing from sales and what the conditions are for a lead to eventually be passed back from marketing to sales. That, of course, is the objective of the exercise.
Here are some additional recommendations regarding lead handling:
Avoid lead leakage. Develop an acceptance process that allows marketing to confirm that sales reps or partners are acting on all delivered leads (or returning them for nurturing). Some things to consider:
Hunters hate chasing anything but the best, sales-ready leads. If you informally expect them to nurture or farm, be prepared to be disappointed.
Marketing will, more than likely, want to put recycled leads into an automated nurture process. This won’t work. Some live contact over a period is required to effectively reheat leads.
2. Identify problems early. The rates of lead acceptance and rejection reveal lead management and quality problems that can be quickly addressed. Organizations should strive for lead acceptance rates that are 90 percent or better. Lower rates typically indicate a breakdown between marketing and sales.
3. Establish a lead processing SLA. What time period do sales reps have to accept or reject a lead? Keep in mind that this is the most critical step. If sales reps close 20% to 30% of qualified leads that means they are losing 70% to 80% of the time. They don’t like that. So, they are very hesitant to accept a lead until it has been fully vetted. Makes sense, right? No, this is death warmed over when it comes to lead velocity. Leads end up in a black hole (called CRM) or simply left in the proverbial lower left-hand desk drawer never to be seen again, especially if the alternative is that a sales rep might get asked why they are not closing a larger percentage of leads.
4. Reduction of lead waste. Rejected leads should be automatically rerouted back to marketing or tele-prospecting for further attention and resubmission if necessary.
Read more here about the importance of having an agreed-upon definition of a lead, why the the 12-Point Revenue Based Marketing Process works, and how to establish a “judicial branch” for your organization to “police” lead processing.
The key takeaways from this post?
· Don’t assume that your sales team members know lead follow-up best practices.
· Don’t assume the agreed-upon definition of a lead is top-of-mind.
· Don’t assume that the way lead processing is handled is efficient and effective. Document the processes and make them part of your ongoing training and communications.
How much priority does your organization place on lead follow-up? What kind of accountability measures are in place?
Call (770-262-9021) or email me (dan.mcdade@prospect-experience.com) for a free consult – you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.