Four Ways You Are Marketing Backwards. When was the last time you asked Sales to properly disposition their MQLs?

There is another recurring phenomenon I’ve seen in one hundred percent of the Marketing and Sales organizations with whom I have consulted. Literally - every single one of them. This phenomenon has a name and, even though it is not published or circulated in any formal way. But every time I see the phenomenon in an organization, I can invoke this name and marketers everywhere immediately understand it. It is “The Black Hole.”

The Black Hole
Of course, this Black Hole has no cosmic origin, but it does seem to have cosmic relevance – at least in terms of Demand Generation. To understand the significance of The Black Hole, we need to first revisit typical Demand Funnel operation and its implications in Closed-loop Reporting. If we go back to our previous discussion about building a Lead Management process, we’ll recall that there need to be specific stages through which a buyer – or Lead for our purposes – must travel to become a customer. Each of these stages have definitions, actions in stage and triggers to move them either forward to backwards in the process.

In a typical Demand Funnel, there is a specific handoff between Marketing and Sales between the MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) to SAL (Sales Accepted Lead) stages. At this point, Marketing (typically via the MAP, or Marketing Automation Platform) no longer initiates changes to the Demand Funnel stages. Sales (typically via the CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system) initiates changes to the Demand Funnel as a result of conversations with the prospect. These updates are called dispositions. For example, when a Sales Rep has a conversation with a prospect and discovers specific BANT qualifications have been met, she might need to open an Opportunity and trigger Demand Funnel movement from SAL to SQL. This is a typical type of Demand funnel disposition.

This is also where we discover the Black Hole! Most Demand Gen organizations have little to no insight into what happens to a Lead once it exits the MQL stage and is being dispositioned by Sales. Once these Leads exit Marketing’s jurisdiction, they fall into The Black Hole, never to be seen or heard from again. Why is this a problem? It makes closed-loop reporting impossible, since Marketing has no idea how or when Leads move through the Funnel to finally close – either won, lost or other (usually a class of leads that don’t buy at all – either from you or your competitors). Critical data is lost, and Marketing cannot, with any reliability, attribute revenue to its Marketing activities.

Why Sales should care

We’re going to start this discussion with a key topic we’ve discussed earlier: creating a solid MQL-to-SLA agreement on the definition and SLA. Further discussion on this topic with Sales is impossible without this agreement, so make sure you have it in place. Often, when we get to this question – why should Sales care? – we get a number of responses, such as:

·         We consistently close our quota, so why should we have to enter a bunch of stuff that is only relevant to Marketing?

·         This stuff is irrelevant to my job and takes too much time I could be using to talk to prospects and sell more.

·         I already fill out my weekly prospecting report for my Sales Manager and this is a duplication of effort – I shouldn’t have to do this twice.

These are all powerful arguments, so how does Marketing respond to these objections?

1.       First, understand this is a team effort. It is not “us vs. them” and if you treat it that way, it will become that much harder to gain consensus on the right way to disposition Leads so everyone benefits. Approach the subject as a collaborative effort to improve the entire organization’s results.

2.       High performers consistently meet and exceed quota, and often are accorded a lot of credibility when it comes to sales process to close business. Let’s face it, what Sales Manager would not want to have everyone emulate their top performers? What’s relevant here is that these dispositions are not only relevant to Marketing, they are highly relevant to Sales! The more the Marketing team can understand about how Leads process through the system, the Marketing will get at identifying and qualifying better prospects to send to the Sales team. Do top performers want to spend less time with poorly matched prospects and more time with those prospects who fit the ideal buyer profile? If we want to stop wasting time, let’s stop wasting it talking to prospects who are unlikely to buy in the first place!

3.       Why are Sales managers asking their reps to manually fill out additional reporting when everything they need to know should be dispositioned in the CRM system? If the CRM system is not set up with the correct hierarchies allowing managers full visibility into the activities and results of their teams, the organization has an infrastructure issue that needs to be resolved. Every leading CRM system has a way for managers at any level to see the current state of their entire team’s pipeline in real time or near real time. The rep is correct – she should never have to enter the same information twice.

There is one final argument we often hear, but should be moot if you have begun with that strong MQL-to-SAL agreement. That argument is that Marketing only sends over junk leads. If Sales and Marketing leadership have aligned and agreed on the definition of an MQL, this argument is actually one against Sales leadership, not Marketing. If that agreement is in place, anyone complaining about the quality of Leads should be referred to the Sales leader who agreed to the MQL definition, because that individual determined the attributes of a properly qualified lead

Change the conversation.

There should never be a question about why Sales should disposition Leads in a timely and effective manner. Change the conversation to how Marketing can help Sales accomplish those dispositions so the data acquired can help both teams improve the quality and quantity of MQLs being sent to Sales! That way, everyone wins.

Notes:

Understand Lead disposition is a team effort. Timely and proper disposition of Leads helps everyone succeed.

The information gained through timely and proper disposition helps both Marketing and Sales..

We’ve used the Demand Funnel to show why we need a complete picture of the Lead lifecycle from Marketing to Sales. We’ve convinced Sales it is in their best interest to disposition Leads in a proper and timely manner, so we can rely on our Demand Funnel. Next, let’s dig into some ways we can leverage your Demand Funnel in  Three Ways to Use your Demand Funnel to Improve Marketing Effectiveness, Part 1.