Developing Qualified Leads For Your Sales Organization
By,
Mari Anne Vanella
CEO, The Vanella Group, Inc.
The Qualified Lead Problem
Sales and Marketing Executives know the constant struggle between the two as to what constitutes a qualified lead. Marketing will generate a lead and Sales will often say it wasn't qualified and send it back. Sales may even have a tainted view of the leads that come over and thus may not give them high priority follow up. It isn't uncommon for Marketing to ask for a status from Sales, only to discover that no one has followed-up at all on the leads that were sent over. Studies show up to 70% of leads never receive any follow-up* if there is not an immediate sales opportunity. In 2005 it is estimated up to 49% of tech marketing budgets will be spent on Lead Generation efforts, with an estimated 35% of that spending allocated for offline marketing efforts such as Telemarketing and Direct Mail. Marketing spends more effort on Lead Generation than any other activity. The question is, since Lead Generation programs continue to get high priority, how can a more ‘qualified’ lead be developed before it is handed over to Sales and how can Marketing increase the percentage of follow-ups made in the development of these prospects? While Marketing will manage a large number of ongoing programs, this article is focused on maximizing that 35% of spending on offline programs such as Telemarketing and targeted Direct Mail for big-ticket enterprise solutions.
Tactical Qualification Methods
There are a couple of very effective ways to better qualify leads prior to sending the data to Sales. They are:
Want to read the rest of this
article? Contact us to
request the entire report.
|
