The Elephant on the Conference Room Table

On September 17th, I'll be interviewing Tom Weinbaum, VPof Demand Creation Marketing at Foundation Source. Isn't that a great title! Our topic is "Lead Management" and how to do it successfully. This is often a highly charged area as for the first time, marketing is requiring accountability from sales and vice versa - I call it "The Elephant on the Conference Room Table."

It's the Monday morning senior management team meeting. It starts with the VP of Sales giving an update on the sales pipeline and revenue and then it's your turn, Mr/s Marketer to give an update on the lead funnel and the impact you are making on revenue. Your report focuses on all the leads you are turning over to sales, how qualified they are and how you don't think they are being followed up on (is that correct English?) Sales volleys back that what they are getting is not qualified and so goes another Monday morning senior management team meeting.

People there is an elephant sitting on that conference room table that no one is acknowledging and it's called lead management. This has been a topic of my last few blogs because I think it deserves a lot of attention in 2009. My friend Eric Blumthal of Count5 just responded in our LASER Lead Generation Group on this topic and here is a synopsis of the problem.

1. Sales and marketing don't have a common set of lead definitions
2. Sales isn't classically trained to work the very top of the sales funnel - nor are they compensated for this work (in a sense)
3. Marketing is not trained in selling at all - they don't know what they don't know
4. No one is responsible for working these leads they way they need to be
5. There is no "lead management process" in place with assigned roles, accountability, tools and time lines

Here is an example. Marketing works hard to get a lead - as defined by marketing. How often does marketing take it upon themselves to have their own definition of a lead and never invite sales to this discussion? VERY often. Sales gets LOTS of leads from marketing and based on prior experiences, sales will cherry pick through these leads and call them when they get some free time or the pressure to get more opportunities into the sales funnel gets high. Big mistake as the shelf life of a lead is 72 hours max and in some industries, several hours. Does all of this sound familiar?

Here is a sample outline of a joint sales and marketing workshop I have facilitated many times that will help address that elephant on the conference room table.

1. Do a survey - have sales comment on lead production from marketing and have marketing comment on lead followup from sales. Discuss the results.
2. Create a common set of lead definitions, given the tools available to marketing today. "I, Marketing, will pass a lead to sales when it meets this set of criteria..."
3. Create an SLA with sales - "I Sales, will follow up on qualified leads from Marketing within 24 hours of receiving the lead."
4. Jointly develop campaign ideas. Sales is your best resource for what potential leads will respond to..ask them!

Of course, this is all very simplistic but you would be amazed how often these basics are not in place. Why? Because this represents a process and role change for marketing - it's hard for marketing to do and it's hard for sales to accept. It is the elephant sitting on the conference room table that everyone is hoping will go away. It won't and you will have to address these process issues around lead management.

How have you addressed this issue in your company?

Metrics That Matter

If your CEO or VP hasn't yet asked you for metrics that demonstrate your impact on the business - get ready for 2010 because it's coming! As we travel across the country and meet with marketers now fully tasked with making a lead generation and demand generation impact, it is apparent that more and more companies are asking for, even requiring, "Metrics That Matter." In business speak, this means what is the revenue contribution from marketing. For many marketers, this is a daunting task but with the arrival of marketing automation systems on the market, this is now a slam dunk!

As you look at how you can report on "Metrics That Matter," here are five best practices:

1. Start with what you have
As you adopt marketing automation systems and implement and begin to fully utilize them, you will change what you measure because you will now be able to measure things you could not before. However, in the beginning, start with what you can tangibly and discretely measure. Items such as: # of emails sent, % open, % click-throughs and % effective rate (click-through/open)

2. Create a set of base-line metrics
To see improvement, you have to start with a baseline. Create a baseline (even if it is your best guess) for every key metric you will be tracking and reporting. Try to get general agreement on these metrics.

3. WAG for every campaign
A few years ago Harvard Business Review did an article on the art of guessing (Wild *#* Guess) in business and found that experienced professionals were often no more than 10-20% away from their WAG when compared to actual results. For the DG marketer, this means that EVERY campaign needs to have a set of WAGs associated with them - from Day 1. This will help you get used to working to achieve these key metrics.

4. Only a handful of metrics matter
While there are many things you can measure, ask yourself - "What does my leadership team care about?" This will help you define the Metrics That Matter. For example, your CEO could probably care less about how many emails got sent out or the number of opens or even click-throughs. What he probably cares about are the number of highly qualified leads sent to sales as measured by the % of these leads that converted into opportunities.

5. Walk and talk like a VP of Sales
Last year we did a study on metrics by interviewing top Demand Generation Marketers. We found many common attributes across this seasoned group but one of the most surprising was they sounded like a VP of Sales. They were incredibly Metrics That Mattered driven and could tell you at anytime where they were against plan - almost like they had a quota (some did.) Additionally, they were deeply integrated with sales and knew that if sales was going to achieve their quota, then they had to achieve theirs.

What have you seen?