Many organisations struggle to integrate marketing and
sales, as both groups face different pressures and challenges. The first step to sales and marketing integration
is creating a common understanding of the overarching business objectives to
ensure that both departments are pulling in the same direction. It is critical to remember that sales and
marketing are two parts of the same machine.
In the long run, what is good for one is good for the other.
Integrating sales and marketing for the benefit of the
company isn’t easy, because the process requires organisational change and thus
the ability to overcome resistance to change.
Fundamentally, it’s about increasing the level of understanding between
marketing and sales – objectives, terminology, processes and the systems that
support them. This post is about
establishing common terminology and the most common cause for misunderstanding
– the question “what is a Lead?”
Picture the scenario:
The marketing department runs a campaign and hands over a list of names
to sales. Sales comes straight back to
marketing: “We can’t use these! You people are just wasting money! There’s one here whose name is ‘Mickey
Mouse’!” Marketing has handed over leads
as they define them – a list of contacts
generated by a campaign. To the sales
team, these are not leads.
SO, WHAT IS A LEAD?
It seems a simple question, but ask five people and you’ll
get five different answers (or no answer at all). This is one of the most common symptoms of
sales and marketing misalignment. Few
organisations take the time to define what they mean by the term. Often operational pressures get in the way
and nobody has time to investigate the problem beneath the symptoms.
As ever, nothing is as simple as it seems. Effectively, there is no such thing as a ‘lead’
in a generic sense. Lead is an abstract
term; you have to be more specific to describe a lead in terms of its location
in the pipeline. In reality, a lead will
fall into one of a number of subcategories, depending on where it is in the sales
cycle. In order to communicate
effectively and work together, marketing and sales must clearly understand the
terminology involved.
An unknown person who has had some sort of contact with your marketing organisation – e.g. visited your website or booth, or had contact with one of your marketing campaigns without reaching a conversion point by which you are able to positively identify the prospect.
Marketing Identified Lead (MIL)
A ‘known lead’. Somebody who has given their contact information as part of an enquiry or in exchange for a whitepaper, webcast or other resource.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A lead which meets specific, objective criteria indicating the lead is sales-ready. Essentially, this is a lead which is deemed by the lead scoring criteria to be ready for sales to develop a personal relationship. If marketing have done their homework and implemented a lead scoring system in close conjunction with sales, then these leads should be just what the sales team are looking for.
Sales Accepted Lead (SAL)
If the lead is accepted, it will go into a queue of leads to be called by inside-sales/telesales in order to qualify. If a MQL passed over to sales is not accepted by sales on first sight, or rejected after a qualification call, it should be passed back to marketing (PBM) where it will be re-classified as a Marketing Identified Lead and included in a lead nurturing program to keep it ‘warm’.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
A lead which has been qualified by inside-sales/telesales as a viable new business opportunity (e.g. Budget, Authority, Need and Timing are all there).
Win
Closed business e.g. a deal has been struck and a contract signed by the relevant authority in the customer organisation.
Tips for success:
- It doesn't matter if you use commonly accepted terminology (like that of the above), as long as you define standard, terminology within your organisation - that is understood and accepted by both marketing and sales.
- A purchased email address is the lowest quality lead. Purchased email addresses haven’t ‘raised their hands’ to demonstrate interest in something that you offer, whether that be your products/services or simply content. Nor do you have any profile information to assess budget, authority, timeline, company size, etc. It is recommended that you should avoid purchased lists as conversion rates and ROI are very low when cost and effort are taken into account.
- Even when the organisation has set and communicated lead terminology, there is still an opportunity for confusion. Marketing automation and CRM tools often enforce their own terminology. Where possible, implement marketing automation and CRM system which allows you to modify field labels to align terminology with your organisation’s own terminology.
