Dear Marketing Department, Please Stop Sending Us Crap Leads. Love, Sales

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Dear Marketing Department, Please Stop Sending Us Crap Leads. Love, Sales

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Seth Resler | February 29, 2012

Have you implemented a formal lead scoring and qualification process?

If not – the email below may strike a little close to home:

Dear Marketing,

As a small company, there’s a lot of work to be done, and not enough people to do it. So it’s really important that we all work together. It’s also really important that we can have open, honest, direct dialogue. So here it is, sans sugar coating:

Please stop sending us crap leads.

Earlier today I called one of the names in our database. It was a network engineer in Milwaukee who controls a $3 million dollar budget for IT software.

We sell floral arrangements.

Seriously, this guy wouldn’t know a chrysanthemum from an amaryllis if his paycheck depended on it.

I know the relationship between sales and marketing hasn’t always been smooth. You know that we think all your team does is create silly t-shirts and send out junk mail. And we know that you continually mock us by quoting Alec Baldwin’s ABC speech from Glengarry Glen Ross behind our backs.

But the truth is, the world’s changed, and it’s not as hard to deliver qualified leads to the sales team. If you would just take a moment to help us prioritize the leads with lead scoring, we could all go home with Cadillac El Dorados…or at least a set of steak knives.

Truce?

Sincerely,

The Sales Team

Sales teams are demanding, and when they aren’t achieving their target there is bound to be frustration. As marketers, we need to do everything we can to ensure sales is getting the right sales leads and not spending their (well-paid) time calling the wrong people. You can see in the chart below that this is critical to ensure success.

To see the rest of the presentation from this slide, check our Secret Sauce to Demand Generation. And to get the inside scoop on lead scoring, see our Definitive Guide to Lead Scoring.

http://www.inbound2012.com/dear-marketing-department-please-stop-sending-us-crap-leads-love-sales/ Dear Marketing Department, Please Stop Sending Us Crap Leads. Love, Sales | Inbound 2012

[...] Dear Marketing Department, Please Stop Sending Us Crap Leads. Love, Sales [...]
http://www.salesandmarketingjobs.net/b2b/best-of-b2b-marketing-zone-for-february-29-2012/ Best of B2B Marketing Zone for February 29, 2012 « Sales and Marketing Jobs

[...] Dear Marketing Department, Please Stop Sending Us Crap Leads. Love, Sales MODERN B2B MARKETING | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012 [...]
http://www.marketo.com Maria Pergolino

Hey Brock, I agree and disagree with you. At Marketo, marketing and sales have revenue goals. I have pipeline goals, and receive commission for, those goals. My entire team – manager level and higher are commissions on those goals. Everyone on my team, regardless of level, also has stock in our company. Because of this, we want wins. We want them badly.

That said, marketing can not always be measured in wins. Why? Sometimes program measurement must happen faster than wins can be measured in wins. I am responsible for dozens of programs every month, and many of them have the potential to repeat monthly. If I was to wait six months to see which turned to wins I would potentially miss four months of repeating that program. Leads are a way to have an early indicator of the success of that program (no leads=bad program, lots of leads=good program). This also happens when we are entering a new market. Sometimes I am trying to get leads in a particular segment long before my reps are even able to sell. I have spent the last year watching programs from a particular segment and doing programs to obtain leads in this area so that there is a known market as the reps begin selling here. This is critical for early success with this launch. Finally, sometimes we market to ensure our customers are aware of product functionality or because we are trying to signal certain things to investors. When doing this, goals are not aligned with leads or wins.

Please note- for this comment I am defining leads as names that are passed to the sales team, because they have done some activity and have a certain demographic that cause them us to believe they are both a potential buyer and that they are currently exhibiting buying signs. We call people that are added to our database from events, online, etc names, not leads.
http://sourcing3.com/blog/best-of-b2b-marketing-zone-for-week-of-february-25-2012/ Sourcing3 Buyer & Supplier Magazine – Best of B2B Marketing Zone for Week of February 25, 2012

[...] Dear Marketing Department, Please Stop Sending Us Crap Leads. Love, Sales MODERN B2B MARKETING | WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012 [...]
http://www.DigitalSalesDoctor.com Brock Butler, D.Sc.

Hi Maria,Thank you for your reply. We both agree that marketing and sales have the same goal – WINS. Then what is the ONLY accurate predictor of WINs? Ideal Sales Opportunities.Suppose we hired the top process and quality engineers in the world to help your CEO develop the most effective and efficient revenue process to create ISO’s and WINs? What would that process look like?Not in a million years would they build two fragmented departments with a process boundary called “leads”. When you shift your focus from leads to ideal sale opportunities you will begin to see a single, more systematic, more customer-oriented, BETTER revenue process.Are you aware you can decrease leads and increase opportunities and revenue? Read “The Goal”, by Goldratt. It is the foundation of modern enterprise resource planning. Marketing and sales need to join the performance revolution. (They are only thirty years late)
Anonymous

Hi Ayeen, It’s certainly not hard to produce low quality leads. Producing quality leads – or more accurately, determining which leads are quality – is the trickier. As you point out, that’s where the marketing automation comes in.