During a recent broadcast of SLMA Radio, Jim Obermayer and Will Crist took opposing positions to gain better understanding as to why Sales gets so ticked at Marketing.
Jim took the position of a marketing executive and Will took that as a sales team member.
"A Sales Person should be helping someone who has a problem come to a decision as quickly as possible," according to Will Crist.
A sales lead from a sales person perspective is sales qualified lead - what sales people should expect or gently demand from that lead is that:
Someone that has raised their hands saying they want to talk to someone about the problems they are having. Or, a company or person who wants to talk to someone to about my problems -- not about the product.
You can here the discussion here:
Standard Podcasts [00:51:32m]: | Download | Embeddable Player |
Disqualifiers:
- outrageous expectations
- no money
- cannot make a decision
- no time to deal with it.
Qualified lead is a person with a need - ideally an immediate need.
Marketing's feeling is that Sales thinks a lead is someone ready to buy.
If they are not ready to buy, they think it's a waste of effort.
Ideally a PO would be attached to a sales lead; but as we know, that doesn't usually happen.
Sales person is supposed to help the person with the problem come to the decision as quickly as possible.
What do most sales people say are wrong with most leads - what is the biggest complaint.
Will told a story, "I had a client generating 289 leads per month. They would go to the restaurants, invited people from the companies they wanted, "Come on over!" From the lunch, marketing would give the cards to the sales folks from the lunch presenting them as 'qualified' leads worthy of follow up. When sales followed up, the "leads" told them, 'Thank you for the great lunch, but we aren't interested in talking to you..."
Borrowed interest. Typical - put your card in the bowl - get a free iPad, pens, etc.
Marketing has to watch out that they don't use borrowed interest to raise their hands and create unqualified leads.
What is your tradeshow experience? How many leads do you bring back? How many are QUALIFIED leads? Who wants to talk about the problems? Who has a date and time attached to the cards? Better to bring back 30 of these leads, rather than 400 with borrowed interest as the motivator.
Complicating factor:
Marketing is measured by how many leads they generate - not QUALIFIED leads?
Most companies don't know how to discern that reporting, which causes Marketing to grab any type of lead they can. This leads to sales not trusting or not bothering with the leads passed on from marketing.
You can here the discussion here:
Standard Podcasts [00:51:32m]: | Download | Embeddable Player | 
