Said another way, your marketing performance drives sales lead performance, which drives sales performance. Either way it works.
Failure starts with a lack of marketing performance, which is often due to inadequate budgeting. The root cause of inadequate marketing budgeting lies with executives who do not understand the causative effect marketing spending has on lead generation and sales performance.
Sometimes simple statements, as in the title of this article, are so obvious we overlook their implications. But executives can only understand these symbiotic relationships if they see a solid connection between spending and sales, which can only be proven by a solid sales lead management process.
Of course, pure lead generation without thought given to managing the lead process can also lead to less-than-expected or -forecasted sales. Manage leads poorly, process them slowly, give salespeople more than they can handle, allow them to choose whom to follow-up with, skip any part of the nurturing or ROI measurement process, and a dozen points of failure pop up. It doesn’t mean total failure; it just means degrees of failure.
Bill Parcells, said “When you set small visible goals, and people achieve them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed.”
Bill Parcells, an NFL winning coach quoted in the Harvard Business Journal article The Tough Work of Turning around Teams, said “When you set small visible goals, and people achieve them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed.”
Out of dozens of tactical improvements you can make in sales lead management, I suggest these three are noteworthy:
1. Sales Lead Follow-up will increase sales in direct proportion to the number of inquiries followed up.
2. Inquiry Nurturing, manually or through marketing automation, will increase sales.
3. Sales Source Measurement, by media type, will lead to wiser spending of lead-generation dollars, which will lead to sales increases.
Parcells said set “small” goals and hit them. I guess these are not really small goals, but each is relatively easy to achieve, and each will have a direct impact on sales.
So when will you get started?
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