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2 Take-Aways from a MarketingSherpa Case Study

Guest post by: Jeff Ogden

Article Overview: Centerbeam, a company that delivers technology infrastructure support for mid-sized businesses, was the subject of a case study by MarketingSherpa recently. You can read the case study at Lead Generation: How ignoring 16,896 companies helped improve Sales-Marketing alignment. We wish to share our thoughts on this case study with our fans.

2 Take-Aways from a MarketingSherpa Case Study

B2B Lead Generation | Lessons from a MarketingSherpa case study Moving Lead Generation to Sales. Does it work? To save money, the VP of Sales decided to have his direct salespeople handle lead generation, rather than Marketing. This meant that sales handled all:

o Sending outbound email

o Conducting all telephone follow-ups

o Securing all of their own appointments

o Conducting lead nurturing

o Engaging in database acquisition

It was a spectacular failure. The sales pipeline shrank and shrank quickly. They quickly moved those functions back to Marketing.

I believe the title MarketingSherpa used, while a great headline, misses a key point. The two key take-aways are these:

1. Lead Generation done by Sales is a mistake.
   
   Keep it in Marketing – but tightly align it with Sales. (Such as agreeing on lead definitions.)
2. Careful targeting is one of the most important activities you can take.
   
   Centerbeam removed government and education from their target market. They decided to focus on lead quality rather than quantity. Hence the comment about ignoring almost 17,000 companies.

In my opinion, far too many companies are relying on Sales for lead generation. Hey guys, it doesn’t work.

What do you think? We love comments and those who share.



“If more companies listened to (Find New Customers) a lot more would be sold.” Dan McDade, Pointclear.

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Article Tags: b2b demand generation, b2b lead generation, btob demand generation, btob lead generation, demand gen, demand generation, demand generation companies, demand generation company, find new customers, lead gen, lead generation, lead generation companies, lead generation company, sales lead generation



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