Frontline Perspectives

No lead follow-up will break your sales cycle.

When new clients come to us, I am always amazed at how little thought has been given to lead fulfillment and follow-up in a lead generation campaign. I can get a detailed list of what has been done in marketing, but I rarely get a database that provides insight into what produced orders, and the status of the other leads.

This is a huge misstep. Every marketing campaign should have a metric to measure responses, and every lead should be entered into a database that then scores, qualifies and fulfills the lead request. Along with this, you need to have mapped your buying cycle so you understand what needs to happen next to nurture this prospect further down your buying cycle.

Now I’ll be honest, none of the above should fall on your sales team’s shoulders. Lead qualification in my mind is the responsibility of the marketing team. Don’t get me wrong, they do need to work together, but sales should only be getting qualified leads, not every prospect that raises their hand for information.

You need to create one database for all your leads, create fulfillment processes for each campaign. Insure that these processes happen quickly (while prospects still remember they asked for information). You need to personalize the information for the prospect so it’s clear you are a company that listens. And once you’ve qualified the lead, get it to the sales team immediately for a close. And if the lead doesn’t qualify, put it back in your database for additional communications that help move the lead along the buy cycle. And measure each one of these steps to understand how you can improve the process.

This type of closed-loop system is what creates a powerful revenue generator for your organization. This is the type of system that provides a clear measure of ROI for the executive team. This is the type of marketing that will set your organization at the top of the food chain in your industry.