Marketing's Achilles Heel

It’s an uphill task to get prospects pulled like a magnet to your website.

There are some persistent topics which gives a heart ache to marketing team.

What we had defined 10 years back, does it still hold true? If it does not, then how can we change it? If we decide to change it, what impact will it be on all the processes? How do we keep pace with the prospect/ lead definitions in this dynamic world? MQL/ SQL was hot a while ago and now the stories are circulating that MQL is dead and is being replaced by the “conversations”

Is there an agreed SLA between Sales and Marketing? If not, before jumping to establish one, is it possible to establish? How many mountains need to be moved to get the two teams aligned with each other?

Who is responsible to keep the lead processes uptodate considering the uncertainity of today’s world? Yes external circumstances does impact, the way leads are generated and treated.

What about the scoring methodology? Is the system capable enough to handle the changes and does it generate enough confidence within teams that a lead which has a certain level of score can be touched?

Have you solved the holy grail of segmentation? Is the team making an effort to adapt account based marketing?

There should not be a direct flow of leads from marketing automation to a sales rep queue. The lead need to be vetted, scrubed and only handful of “meaningful conversations” should be shared with Sales.

It does sound radical but I totally believe that this is the solution which will bring in value to the entire lead management process. What are your thoughts? Did I miss any of the marketing pain areas? Are there any blind spots?

This is my third post in the Lead Management Blog Post Series. My first post covered qualities of an ideal Sales Lead and the second post focused on the challenges in generating a High Quality Sales lead. My next post will focus on the questions raised in this post and Leads vs Conversations.