Defining a Lead Strategy

Sales doesn’t get paid to cultivate leads. They get paid to close. And, since Sales often doesn’t have the resources or skills to nurture leads until they are ready to purchase, leads not at the purchase stage are frequently left unattended. This broken process stems from a faulty hand-off from Marketing to outbound channels like Sales or Call Centers and represents a lost opportunity.

Software applications to manage leads are plentiful. However, if it were as simple as plugging in a software program, improving Lead Management wouldn’t remain such an opportunity. Effective Lead Management begins by crafting a strategy, starting with two key questions:

QUESTION #1: WHO WILL OWN THE LEAD?

All leads must be assigned, even the low value ones. However, before a lead can be assigned, it needs to be qualified and scored. A lead scoring model should be created to prioritize the lead and identify its potential value to the company. Once a lead is qualified, it can be assigned to the appropriate owner in an automated fashion. Typically, qualified leads that are ready to purchase are owned by Sales or those that can advance the sale, such as outbound Call Centers. Marketing usually owns the less qualified leads.

QUESTION #2: HOW WILL THE LEAD BE ADDRESSED?

To capture the value from leads, communicate. The most common ways to communicate are phone, mail, and email. For high-value, ready-to-purchase leads, the Sales Force or Call Center should telephone the prospect soon after their inquiry. For those prospects not yet ready to commit, email campaigns have proven to be the most cost-efficient method because they are inexpensive to send and the most conducive to being automated. Once the specific method and frequency of communication is determined, the likelihood of success can be increased by ensuring that all communications are a) desired by the prospect and b) relevant and clear. This will ensure that when a prospect is ready to decide, they have a positive impression of the company.

It’s easy to see how a Sales Force can lose respect for unqualified or otherwise low-value leads. The Sales Force is not lazy, quite the opposite—they are rightfully seeking ways to maximize their productivity and thus ignore anything that doesn’t add enough value to justify their valuable time. Many companies struggle to appreciate that most leads fall somewhere between ‘inquiries’ and ‘ready to buy.’ Protocols to determine who owns the lead at various points along the sales pipeline should be established. For example, certain leads may have high potential but are not ready to purchase; the lead is ‘immature.’ The solution is to route these leads to a dialog/drip marketing campaign. Dialog marketing is an opt-in campaign that sends immature leads periodic emails with value-added (and hopefully relationship-enhancing) information around product improvements, value proposition, or relevant case studies. The goal is to create goodwill with the prospect so that when the prospect is closer to a purchase decision, your company is at the top of their vendor list.

Once these two fundamental questions are answered, a few additional variables should be considered: the size of the lead flow, the value of the average sale and margins, the opportunity cost (compensation and occupancy costs) of front line employees (both Sales and Call Center), and the company’s willingness to embrace new technologies.

Only companies with large, high-margin products with light lead flow may be able to employ a more manually intensive Lead Management process. However, the great majority of companies need to take a more balanced view of their resources, requiring the strategic use of customer segmentation, integration with front office solutions, as well as an overhaul of policies and processes to drive clarity and accountability, and in so doing, can reap the benefits of an optimized Lead Management program.

Link to the next article in the sequence: Lead Management 4.0 – A Systematic Approach

Author

David Bartenwerfer is the founder and principal of Quantum Consulting and Technology. QuantumCT helps product and marketing organizations get smarter and prove, predict and optimize impact and ROI with economic and financial modeling that employs customizable algorithms and technology leading to fast and lasting insight and action. Mr. Bartenwerfer has over twenty years’ experience in the High Tech, Internet, Telecom, Media, Financial Services and Retail industries and holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering with minors in applied mathematics and economics from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. For further information, contact the author at davidbartenwerfer@quantumct.com.