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Conclusions from the study: Sales Speaks - Perceptions and Ponderings on Marketing Leads

Guest post by: Jeff Ogden

Article Overview: Over the last four years, sales quotas increased 33%, while quota achievement dropped by 25%. Only 50% of salesreps made quota in 2010 and in 42% of companies, fewer than 1/2 made quota. This is why the role of demand generation is growing by leaps and bounds.

Conclusions from the study: Sales Speaks - Perceptions and Ponderings on Marketing Leads

by Jeff Ogden, President of the B2B lead generation consultancy, Find New Customers.

Vorsight and The Bridge Group Inc. recently completed a study of over 1,150 B2B Sales reps on what they think about sales leads. We invite you to download the full study here.

I'd like to summarize this study for our readers. Before we begin, let's look at a profile of the B2B sales study participants.



Here are the conclusions of the study, along with our recommendations.

Most leads stink On average, only 3 out of 10 leads are in profile. 7 out of 10 have a low probability of purchase. Not only does this reduce win rates, it burns expensive cycles too.

Action item: Focus on lead quality. Make sure you have a clearly defined Ideal Customer Profile so you can get rid of bad "leads." Reduce the flow of unqualified leads to sales.

Most leads target the wrong executives Only 12% said 3 out of 4 or more are decision makers.

Action Item: Train Sales to focus on qualifying companies, not just contacts. Devise a process and use it.

Prospects are decent at providing accurate data 4 out of 10 say data is accurate or very accurate. Not bad. But even that means over half is not accurate. SiriusDecisions found that most companies have 25-30% inaccurate prospect data.

Action Item: Focus on data cleanliness and quality. For instance, instead of going directly to a link to content (they fill out the form and get the content), email a link for the content to them. This ensures they use a valid email address - they don't get the content without it.

Companies by and large are doing a terrible job of qualifying leads using lead scoring 4 out of 10 companies are doing no lead scoring at all. Less than 2 out of 10 have scoring systems one can describe as "accurate." According to the study "Sales Reps are grading lead scoring in its infancy."

Action Item: Learn about lead scoring and get going on it ASAP.

Companies still rely on salespeople to generate most leads

65% of salespeople - more than half - generate their own leads. This is despite the fact that it is harder than ever to get in the door of a decision maker. And the fact that demand generation (in marketing) is a hot topic. Note sales expert, Jill Konrath, says this number is shocking and encourages marketing to step up.

Action Item: Learn about B2B Lead Generation (Our white paper, How to Find New Customers; Our Education page, or the book eMarketing for the Complex Sale by Ardath Albee.)

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Article Tags: b2b lead generation, b2b lead generation strategies, find new customers, lead generation companies, sales lead generation, sales leads lead generating



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