A recent study from the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) shows that many companies are ignoring their sales lead management.
Their 2nd annual Sales Lead Management Study, conducted with 144 businesses in Southern California, revealed the following results:
- 68.8% don’t qualify leads before sending them to their sales teams
- 52.4% have no formal process for compiling sales forecast reports
- 82.8% don’t track ROI for lead generation investments
- 55% rated low satisfaction with their SFA/CRM system, at 5 or less on a 10-point scale
- 52.1% use no SFA/CRM system to track the lead process
My View: The gap between sales & marketing departments has only grown over the years.Sales has had a siloed process in enterprises and in my experience getting sales to see & appreciate good quality leads is always big problem. On the other hand, I have always found, lack of understanding what a good lead is the problem of most lead generation programs. Often there is a mix of science, logic and an intuitive feeling in the salesperson's mind which a software or a process cannot replicate. But, my belief is that right at the inception of a lead generation program, you need to have the buy-in of the sales team. The lead generation team must be 'considered' a part of the sales team and may be that's the reason there's a term coined as 'inside sales'! Nevertheless, the lead generation team, the software and the process must be seamlessly integrated to succeed. It has to start before the program is implemented and announced. That's the key to its success.