Inbound Lead Management Best Practices [Updated]

This is an updated version of the “Never Waste A Lead” post from September. Back then my partner and I presented at a BMA (Business Marketing Association) event. Here was the event description:

Your marketing programs are generating plenty of leads, especially from your emarketing campaigns, but are they getting followed up on? How effective is your sales organization at contacting your leads? How many never get called, or get only a token effort? Lost or ignored leads is one of the most common bottlenecks of marketing executives trying to maximize revenue from marketing-geneated leads. Instead of getting frustrated with sales, learn best practices of how to work with them to make sure no lead is left behind and wasted.

What you’ll be able to take away from this RoundTable:

• Why salespeople don’t follow up on leads
• Learn the best practices of aligning with sales to eliminate pipeline leakage
• The most useful key metrics
• Relevant CRM best practices

Three Common Mistakes
These are the most common mistakes that companies (especially young ones) make in managing their inbound leads:

1. Diluted ownership of the “marketing-to-sales baton pass.”
Who has clear ownership of the “qualified pipeline generated” metric? It tends to end up as a stepchild, falling in between marketing (focused on quantity of leads) and sales (focused on closed revenue). Yet ‘qualified pipeline generated this month’ is the most important metric/driver of predictable revenue! There needs to be a clear owner.

2. Under-investment in Sales Development (salespeople dedicated to either qualifying inbound leads or doing outbound prospecting.)
Sales Development is a lot less sexy than marketing budget or quota-carrying salespeople, so it doesn’t get the investment it deserves, but it vital! If your company receives more than about 200-300 inbound leads per month, you should have at least one inside salesperson dedicated just to qualifying those leads. Having salespeople qualify raw, unfiltered inbound leads in addition to closing deals is highly unproductive. You’re having your most expensive sales resources doing much lower-value work. “Insource” it to a junior inside rep, and make sure that rep only passes qualified opportunities to the salespeople.

3. Tasking the same reps to both qualify inbound leads and attempt outbound prospecting.
The qualifying inbound leads role should be distinct from the outbound prospecting role. When reps try to do both, their productivity drops like a rock! We experimented with both models at salesforce.com, and the ‘mixed model’ of reps doing both inbound qualification and outbound prospecting was a disaster – I’ll explain why in a future post.