There is another asset that you have that could also be worth looking at in new ways-your existing leads and even your "old" leads.
Many companies get into an inefficient cycle where marketing provides too many unqualified leads, sales doesn't qualify all of them and good ones get thrown away. In one company I worked for we went back to past leads to do a win-loss analysis and discovered that 40% were still alive!
So a good starting point, depending on the nature of your business and the length of the sales cycle, would be to not only go to your existing leads but include leads from the past 6 months or year. Do a win-loss analysis on a sample of them to decide if there is still opportunity there.
Consider scoring your existing leads to better determine how to allocate resources. Assign weighted scores for various behavioral and demographic attributes and then focus marketing and sales efforts on those that exceed levels significant to your business.
Below is the "Automated 21 Day Lead Lifecycle" flow chart from Marketo, a smart company that provides a lead scoring and management SaaS that integrates with Saleforce.com. Once a lead scores 65 according to their model, it is ripe for sales force contact. Leads below that level are kept in an "active prospect database" for marketing.
Here are some sample demographic and behavioral scores for Marketo-yours would need to be tuned to your business.
-visit a webpage: 1
-visit more than 8 pages in one visit: 7
-open an email: 1
-register for a webinar: 5
-attend a webinar: 5
-visit pricing pages: 5
-visit career pages: -10 (not likely to be a buying prospect)
If you are interested in more on lead scoring, here's an insightful presentation, "Marketo's Secret Sauce for Demand Generation."
No comments:
Post a Comment