Entries from January 2007
Gaps In Your Sales Lead Management Process?
IDC sent out a press release yesterday about its latest study, from its CMO Advisory Practice, of IT vendor’s best practices in sales lead management.
Some key findings, summarized in the press release, include:
- Fifty percent of these tech vendors’ marketing investment is allocated to demand generation and a third of that is targeted to directly support the sales force.
- A majority of tech vendors fail to provide for even the most basic need of establishing a consistent global definition of a lead.
- Other failure points include data collection, lead qualification, sales hand-off, lead nurturing, and performance measurement.
- Only a few of the companies surveyed were able to demonstrate their impact on the sales pipeline.
None of this surprises me. Why? Because business-to-business sales leads are my consulting speciality. So I’m wrestling with these issues on behalf of my clients every day.
But as competitive as the IT industry is, and with half of their marketing investments focused on demand generation, wouldn’t you think that these tech vendors would have addressed these problems and have them licked by now?
And these sales lead problems aren’t limited to IT vendors. Far too many companies in the B2B space do a poor job of generating, nurturing, qualifying and converting leads into sales-ready opportunities and closed sales.
I guess I’ll stay busy for a while, helping all these companies to fix their sales lead programs!
If your company:
- doesn’t have a clear, agreed-to definition of a “lead”
- needs a better way to qualify leads
- has a gap handing off leads to sales for follow up
- can’t show how sales leads affect the sales pipeline
- is not doing a good job nurturing leads, collecting data or measuring performance
…then you’re in luck. Get some help now and you’ll soon see benefits in your bottom line.
- Link: IDC CMO Research Study Reveals Significant Gaps in the Lead Management Process, Though Best Practices Are Emerging
- Link: You can purchase the study itself here.
