Solving the Lead Quality vs. Quantity Debate to Increase ROI

Lead quality, quantity and conversion are still top of mind for sales and marketing executives.

According to the 2015 B2B Lead Generation Report cited by Brighttalk, improving lead quality over quantity is a top priority for over 600 marketing professionals surveyed:

B2B marketers have demonstrated a clear preference for generating high-quality leads (68%) over generating a high volume of leads (55%).

The majority of today’s marketers (59%) reported that generating those valuable high quality leads was their biggest challenge, over things like converting leads to customers (42%) and running effective lead nurturing programs (37%).

Media Horizons points out in Lead Generation Trends For 2014, that as “B2B companies look to increase their marketing ROI in the year ahead, B2B marketers recognize that generating more leads (78%) and generating quality leads (60%) are the biggest challenges they’re facing in 2014, according to a study from MarketingProf.”

How to Balance Lead Quality and Quantity: 7 Tools for Management

Quantity and quality both drive lead generation success. Sales and marketing depend on each other to get more and better leads. How can management make both more successful?

Management needs steps to unify sales and marketing teams when it comes to finding, nurturing and closing good leads.

Next you’ll find seven solutions designed to help you make this happen:

1. Assign Who is Responsible for Resolution. The buck stops where? Management’s role is to lead consensus between Sales and Marketing.
2. Make Realistic Expectations. Goals and expectations are necessary. Base them on real data.
3. Have a Clear Reporting Structure. Depending on the organization, Sales Development may report to Sales, Marketing or both.
4. Plan to Succeed. Do you have a plan?
5. Use Lead Definitions. Why is a universal lead definition so hard to develop and follow?
6. Compensate to Motivate. Verify that compensation rewards performance that meets desired goals.
7. Balance Your Processes. Define operations and reporting processes and ask: Are they helping or hurting?

If you are concerned with unifying Sales and Marketing to build a predictable revenue stream to meet your annual revenue number, these insights can guide your steps to generate better leads.

This is a brief excerpt from our downloadable eBook Solve the Sales and Marketing Debate Get Better Leads 7 Tools to optimize lead quality. Subscribe to receive our next update  for details about the first 4 steps to help you optimize lead quality and improve ROI of your sales and marketing efforts.

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