Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff

RICHARD HILTON explains how to get smarter with lead generation

As every sale begins as a lead, the effectiveness of an organisation’s lead generation process ultimately determines the extent of a sales leader’s future success. The more ambitious the sales goals, the more important – and challenging – the lead generation process becomes.

Sales leaders continue to recognise lead generation as a top challenge. According to 38% of respondents surveyed for CSO Insights’ 2018-2019 sales performance report, Selling in the Age of Ceaseless Change, the “inability to generate enough qualified leads” is one of the greatest barriers to achieving success this year.

RICHARD HILTON is managing director EMEA at sales training and coaching specialist Miller Heiman Group. Email info@millerheimangroup.com or visit millerheimangroup.com

Despite a constant focus on leads, many sales leaders still struggle to articulate clearly what a lead is, where their leads actually come from, which leads are best, who should own leads, and how technology can improve lead effectiveness. BUT WHY? THE ANSWERS ARE IN THE DATA Many people assume that the marketing function holds primary responsibility for lead generation. However, CSO Insights’ data tells us that sales, marketing, and, to a lesser degree, service and referrals, are all common sources of leads – and sales leads the way. Sales generated over half (53%) of leads in 2018, compared with just 20% generated by marketing.

That figure may come as a shock, given the increased use and sophistication of technology in marketing functions. With almost 7,000 marketing solutions on offer in 2018, new

platforms continue to roll out for account-based marketing (ABM), market identification, lead scoring and campaign automation. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY But what we’re learning is that early use cases that focused on automating volume – more emails, messages and contacts – did not improve prospecting quality in the eyes of the customer. The secret lies in leveraging the analytics that technology provides to tailor and personalise messaging, and making a mental shift away from quantity to quality and conversion rates. It’s not the number of messages that counts, but the conversion rate – and that’s based on quality.

Technology adoption also impacts on organisational structures and confuses the question, “Who is sales?” Sales development reps (the people who do the heavy lifting on lead generation) now report to marketing in some organisations, but report to sales in others.

Social selling presents another area where the lines between sales and marketing are blurred. Salespeople act as their own content marketers, individual brand managers and lead generators via social tools like LinkedIn. However, in my experience, better alignment between the social strategies for marketing and sales translates into better quota attainment and win rates. MARKETING AND SALES NEED ALIGNMENT ON LEAD DEFINITIONS Sales and marketing can’t collaborate effectively if they can’t agree on the definition of a lead. More organisations had a formal lead definition back in 2014 (50%) than they did in 2018 (34%).

To optimise spend, it’s necessary to tailor lead definition to fit the ideal customer profile, specify various stages of lead maturity up to “salesready”, and establish marketing and sales responsibilities along the customer’s path. In addition, there must be a clear understanding of how to measure lead generation effectiveness. Success isn’t about the number of leads, but rather each lead’s revenue contribution, regardless of its origin.

The importance of marketing technology, and the integration of marketing and sales processes, underscores the need to formalise and develop both functions equally. While a clear lead definition was once enough, organisations must now nurture prospects until they become sales-ready to drive lead generation effectiveness.

Looking at the issue from the perspective of a customer’s path, it’s obvious that organisations need both a clear lead definition (including a scoring model) and a lead nurturing process. Sending “unready” leads directly to the salesforce kills the lead and frustrates the sellers.

Ultimately, the end goal of effective lead generation is much bigger than the end result of any one deal – it’s all about forging profitable, long-term partnerships with buyers.

Although sales process maturity, customer relationships and performance all impact on each other, and must be addressed together, revitalising lead generation processes offers the perfect first step on the journey to lasting sales success.

IMPROVING LEAD GENERATION EFFECTIVENESS – FOUR TOP TIPS

1EMBED CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY

The most successful organisations connect all of their sales processes to the customer. Organisations worry too much about aligning sales and marketing. They need to worry more about aligning them both with the customer. This alignment drives integration by default.

2DEFINE WHAT EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION LOOKS LIKE FOR YOUR ORGANISATION

Collaboration doesn’t occur naturally. It requires an objective and a clearly defined strategy to measure success. A dashboard that reports a combination of leading indicators, such as conversion rates per lead stage, and lagging indicators, such as revenue contribution, increases visibility and awareness of lead generation effectiveness.

3FIX THE BASICS: DEFINITIONS, SCORING MODELS AND INTEGRATED PROCESSES

Define what a lead is, as opposed to an inquiry or an opportunity that has several maturity stages. Terms like “marketing-qualified” or “salesqualified” can distract from the customer focus. Instead, look at different lead maturity stages through the lens of the customer’s path. Next, develop a scoring model for the qualification and lead nurturing steps. Develop models that reflect the specifics of your industry as well as the complexity of your buying/selling scenarios. Once completed, integrate these models into your processes and ensure that the technology you use is based on your definitions and models, not the other way around. With that basic foundation in place, AI-based technology solutions can gather and analyse the data to continue to evolve the model further.

4PUT PROSPECTING RIGHT

Marketing and sales leaders should improve collaboration in several key areas of prospecting to drive lead generation effectiveness: l PROCESS Generating leads covers the early stages of the customer’s path, which makes it a collaborative challenge for marketing and sales. The process must ensure that preparation and research for tailored campaigns based on lead definition are mandatory. In parallel, the process should also ensure that no unprepared cold calls and no “one size fits all” messages are sent to random recipients. l SALES ENABLEMENT Establish a solid, value messaging approach that creates consistency across all enablement services, especially those designed for lead generation purposes. Ideally, marketing plays an orchestrating role to ensure that value messages are consistent and tailored in all relevant enablement services. l FRONTLINE MANAGERS To drive the adoption of desired lead generation behaviours, frontline managers in marketing and sales must consistently coach their direct reports on lead generating and prospecting practices. Measuring success based on leading indicators, such as conversion rates, allows for quick adjustments based on changing buyer behaviours.