“Where are the leads?” the salesperson yells. Or, “Didn’t you do anything with these leads?” the marketer asks indignantly. Do these questions sound familiar to you? If so, there’s a good chance that marketing and sales within your company have different definitions of “leads” and “lead generation.”.
Put it to the test and ask your marketers and salespeople separately what they mean by leads and lead generation. I bet you’ll get a different answer every time. To avoid wasting time and conflicts, it’s a good idea to sit down with both departments and formulate specific definitions for leads and lead generation. Even more important is to establish clear guidelines regarding when a lead marketing-qualified and when sales-qualified is. Later in this blog post, we'll discuss this a tip.
What is our definition of lead generation?
Let's start with the question: What is a lead?? One person says, “A sales opportunity,” while another says, “A person or organization that shows concrete interest in a product or service.” Everyone phrases it a little differently, but essentially it boils down to this: A lead is a potential new customer.
Lead Generation or lead generation These are all the efforts that marketing and sales make to attract potential customers. Potential customers usually don’t contact you out of the blue or end up on your website by chance. They have a specific need or problem, look for possible solutions, and at some point choose a product or service. Marketing and sales must ensure that they attract and retain the attention of these potential customers and ultimately convince them. This can be done through offline lead generation, such as trade shows, conferences, newspaper ads, … . Or through online lead generation, such as websites, content marketing, email marketing, SEO, SEA, social media, … . We probably don’t need to convince you anymore that online lead generation is the preferred choice these days. Still, a combination of both—online and offline—can also be a strong strategy for certain companies.
What is the difference between a Marketing Qualified Lead and a Sales Qualified Lead?
Marketing and sales must also establish clear guidelines regarding when a lead Marketing-Qualified and when Sales Qualified is. In other words, when are his leads ready to be handed over to the sales team?
Marketing-Qualified Lead
A Marketing-Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead in the early stages of the purchasing process (buyer's journey) is located. The lead has shown concrete interest in your company by, for example, downloading an e-book or reading a blog post on your website. He or she has provided certain information, but this does not necessarily mean that the lead is already ready to actually purchase your product or service. The task of marketing is to continue following up on the lead in question and to ‘nurture’ it with relevant information at the right time (lead nurturing). This allows the lead to evolve into a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL).
Sales-Qualified Lead
A Sales-Qualified Lead (SQL) is a lead that is already much further along in the buying process and has already given some initial thought to a product or service. At that point, you need to sales seize the opportunity to follow up with the lead as quickly and effectively as possible. Based on the data collected by the marketing team, the sales team has a better understanding of what the lead needs and how to convince him or her to become a customer.
Lead Scoring
Lead Scoring is a convenient way to determine when leads are ready to be passed on to sales. Lead scoring measures a lead’s online behavior. Based on actions such as downloading an e-book, opening an email, or visiting a webpage, the lead is awarded points. The more points a lead has, the “warmer” it is.
At Alistar, we use the lead scoring method within ClickDimensions. This scoring is based on values that you determine yourself. For example, you can assign a higher point score to filling out a download form than to visiting a specific page on your website. The advantage of ClickDimensions is that lead scoring is applied to all online visitors—not just your leads and contacts who are already known within your Microsoft Dynamics 365-the local community, but also anonymous visitors.
Based on the ‘Score Settings’ in ClickDimensions, we have created an overview in our Microsoft Dynamics 365 database of ‘hottest leads’ created. This allows our marketing and sales staff to always see which leads have the highest scores and what steps they’ve already taken in their purchasing process. Once a lead reaches a certain score—one that has been agreed upon—our sales staff know it’s time to contact the lead.
