1. Sales and Marketing alignment:  We spend a lot of resources developing Leads. So now we must make the most of these efforts by making sure marketing and sales work together, so no leads are overlooked or dropped due to inactivity.

  A) Map out your Sales Process: What are the stages of your Sales Cycle? What stages of lead status you want to track? What happens to a Lead after they come in? How are Leads attributed? What channels do you want to focus on to bring in Leads? What resources are needed in terms of money and time?

   B) Define Clear hand off criteria between Marketing and Sales: Many companies pass the Marketing Leads to Sales only if the Leads reach a lead-score threshold. Before passing on a Lead, it is a best practice to make sure that the Lead has the necessary budget, the purchasing authority, defined need, and purchasing timeline (BANT). If not, we should continue to nurture the Lead within Marketing.  

 C) Define success metrics up front: We must measure success for both Marketing and Sales. By defining these metrics upfront, we will be making sure that we see roadblocks and barriers stopping us from reaching goals. Building KPI’s for both teams is critical in this aspect.

2. Capture Better Quality Leads: More leads mean more potential business for us but we also need to make sure that the quality of the lead is top notch. We need to capture Leads of A level and B level (e.g. A level are Directors, B level are Managers) so that the Sales Directors or the Account Executive can work more better to turn qualified leads into Opportunities.

3. Work on your Data Integrity: A CRM is only as good as its data. It is highly critical to keep our data (leads) clean and up-to-date whilst getting rid of bad data. An efficient process to clean up the data will go a long way in saving time on bad leads.         

4. Find way to work your Leads more efficiently: Once we have good lead, we should prioritize them so that our Sales Development Reps (SDR’s) can reach out and set appointments for Sales Directors. However, leads can differ in quality. Some key points to be remember below.

   A) Prioritize leads with leads scoring: Consider assigning a point system to value the leads that align with successful sales. For example, we can assign 10 points to CEO’s and 5 Points to Managers, based on the experience that CEO appointments generate more closed deals.

   B) Categorize scored Leads: Once scored, we can categorize leads into levels of priority such as Level A, Level B and Level C.

   C) Use assignment rule to route leads:- I would suggest that it is good idea to assign unqualified leads, such a Level C leads to marketing team until they are ready to buy or ready to explore our solutions. Route qualified leads to appropriate Sales Reps for further qualification.

5. Track Leads Penetration: – This is the important point which I want to focus on. We absolutely need to track return on investment (ROI) as leads move through the funnel. For this we need to analyse lead revenue and pipeline. We can create Salesforce Campaigns to track the success of different leads such as # of Leads, # of Converted Leads, amount of revenue influenced by Marketing, and ROI.

The methods highlighted in this article are some of the most effective ways to generate leads and grow a strong lead pipeline which is required to scale any business. Though marketing activities are the most impactful to have a strong lead flow, tracking KPI’s and analyzing them is also a key component which helps understand if the methods suit your business or if you need to make slight tweaks in order to reach your goals.

If you found this article helpful, do share it with your colleagues and connections. Don’t forget to let me know your thoughts on this by commenting below. Good luck and happy hunting.