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2008 Lead Management Study 62.5% of Study Participants cannot track ROI for Marketing Programs

Mark Friedman | Articles > From the section: Leadership and Motivation

November, 2014 |

Co-Founder SLMA President of The Velos Group

For the past year, the Velos Group and the SLMA have asked visitors to the Sales Lead Management Association^SM web site to complete a quick survey on their existing Sales lead Management practices. The results from 140 companies continue to demonstrate that ROI is still not being done and CRM and marketing automation program are not delivering.

Major Findings/Executive Summary

62.5% of the respondents could not track ROI for their Marketing programs.
87.4% of the respondents were not very happy with their current Sales Force Automation (SFA)/ Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
55.5% of the companies do not qualify their marketing inquiries before they are sent to sales.
27% of the companies have no formal process to forecast sales and 24% are still using Excel.

These results do not paint a pretty picture of how to weather the current economic storm.

THE FULL REPORT IS HERE IN PDF >> or continue reading online below:

Sales Lead Management Association
2008 Lead Management Practices Survey Results

For the past year, we have asked visitors to the Sales Lead Management Association^SM web site to complete a quick survey on their existing Sales lead Management practices. Here are the 2008 results from over 140 company responses…..there is trouble in Sales Lead management Land!

Survey Respondent Demographics

1. Number of Direct Sales People

Respondents were primarily smaller companies; 36.2% reported employing fewer than 5 Sales reps, 41.5% employed between 5 and 24 Sales reps and 22.4% had between 25 and 249 Sales reps.

number of direct sales people

2. By Position

Presidents/CEOs made up 21% of respondents while Sales and marketing executives made up 73%.

by position

Major Findings/Executive Summary

62.5% of the respondents could not track ROI for their Marketing programs.
87.4% of the respondents were not very happy with their current Sales Force
Automation (SFA)/ Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
55.5% of the companies do not qualify their marketing inquiries before they are sent to sales.
27% of the companies have no formal process to forecast sales and 24% are still using Excel.

These results do not paint a pretty picture of how to weather the current economic storm.

Survey Results

Major Concerns

1. Two of the biggest concerns are the inability of companies to track the Return on Investment of their Marketing programs (19% of all responses to the question, As you evaluate the way in which you manage your, which of the following is/are your biggest concern(s) and 62.5% of all survey respondents indicated they could not track ROI) and the inability to consistently receive feedback from the Sales organization regarding the status of leads sent to them.

FIGURE 1: MAJOR SALES LEAD MANAGEMENT CONCERNS

These 2 issues are definitely related and point directly to both organizational inefficiencies as well as process deficiencies. Too many companies operate with a departmental"silo" mentality and have not found a way to align the goals and objectives of their Sales and Marketing organizations. Additionally, we find that very few companies have spent the time to document and streamline their processes and procedures as they relate to managing their sales leads. The results of these two shortcomings will produce very negative consequences for companies as they wrestle with the increasingly difficult economy.

2. Greater than 62% of the responding companies do not track the ROI for each of their marketing companies.

FIGURE 2: DOES YOUR COMPANY TRACK MARKETING PROGRAM ROI?

The oldest cliché in advertising is the Wanamaker one about 50% of ad spend being wasted but not knowing which 50%. In a recent blog posting, it was posited that the only rational reasons for not tracking marketing ROI are the following:

We don't need a higher marketing ROI - we're rich
We've never thought about it
We don't know how to check it
We were told it wasn't possible

Although we didn't get into the reasons why, I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that most of the respondents would have selected the last 2 reasons.

3. A majority of companies (55.5% of respondents) still do not qualify their sales leads before they send them to their Sales organization.

The prevailing attitude appears to be that their Sales people should qualify their own leads. As we have written previously, it is far more productive to have a separate group qualify sales leads and only send qualified prospects to sales. It doesn't matter what department these inquiry qualifiers are in or even if the function is outsourced, what does matter is that sales people need to be kept busy talking to qualified prospects; it is what a company pays them to do. Any administrative task that takes them away from selling is potentially condemning the company to lower sales and profits.

FIGURE 3: DOES YOUR COMPANY QUALIFY LEADS FOR SALES

4. Many companies (33.8% of respondents) still don't use an automated Sales Force Automation (SFA)/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application.

FIGURE 4: SALES FORCE AUTOMATION SOFTWARE USED

If a company does use Sales Force Automation/CRM software, they aren't very satisfied with their software. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Extremely Dis-Satisfied and 10 being Extremely Satisfied, 85% rated their satisfaction at 7 or less and fully 54% rate their satisfaction as a 5 or less.

FIGURE 5: SALES FORCE AUTOMATION SOFTWARE SATISFACTION

While it is not overly surprising those companies with fewer than 5 Sales reps don't use this type of software (51%), it is quite surprising is that 24% of the larger companies do not use SFA software. Again, we have found, and much industry research supports, that companies who do use SFA/CRM are much more productive in their Sales organization and close a higher percentage of their leads than companies that do not use this software.

5. Only 23.1% of companies are using a Sales Force Automation program to generate their forecast reports and 27.2% have no formal process to create a sales forecast.

FIGURE 6: GENERATING SALES FORECAST REPORTS

Survey Conclusions

The Sales Lead Management respondents were typically smaller companies and have a lot of room for improvement in their sales lead management practices. By spending time and resources in this critical business area, companies will be able to increase sales, allocate marketing resources more efficiently and will be able to forecast their sales more accurately. All of which will help them survive these difficult economic times.