No, says Sirius Decisions (via dmnViews).
In business-to-business marketing, should sales get most of their leads from marketing? Market research firm Sirius Decisions recently benchmarked successful B-to-B marketers and found that "feeding sales" was NOT the optimal approach. Instead, marketing should focus on nurturing low-probability prospects.
I felt like I was listening to myself at any one of a number of meetings over the years.
Marketing communications is a great way to turn potential customers into likely customers. One of the best ways to short-circuit a good marketing program is to send the salespeople after prospects who are at the "Hmm, that's interesting" stage. A great way to waste money is do the nurturing for two months, and then stop because you haven't gotten enough sales yet.
We've all seen it - usually followed by the "marketing's not giving us any good leads!" / "salespeople aren't following up properly" pissing contest. (Which in its worst form ends with pink slips all around!)
1 comment:
John, been there done that (we need leads? Well, WTF did you do with the first 500 we gave you???)
I always try to get people out of this rut - everyone in the company ultimately does marketing - and we shouldn't separate marketing from sales - it's not a matter of feeding - it's a matter of working together to obtain results, to get and keep loyal, profitable customers (and designing sales compensation accordingly.)
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