Nothing is more important to a marketer or lead generation company than lead acceptance. Sales needs to like your lead for it to have any chance of converting.
Every other lead conversion metric is irrelevant until you get this part right. Brian Carroll, of the B2B Lead Generation Blog nails it:
For this reason, I think cost-per-opportunity measurements are the most effective metrics. The most common metric, cost per lead, is irrelevant unless we can answer other fundamental questions first, “What is our rate of lead acceptance (a.k.a. sales pursuit) into the sales pipeline” and then “What is the cost per opportunity?” Cost-per-opportunity is the one metric that can help you understand how well your sales team accepts and pursues leads. Ultimately, it shows if your leads are actually helping our sales team sell and if marketers are positively contributing to their pipeline.
So, how do you make leads more attractive and valuable to your sales team. Here are a few of my thoughts:
- Don’t play games, show them where they came from
- Get or append as much relevant information as possible
- Work hard to deliver clean (contactable) data
- Use a lead management system that shows/reward performance
Help me with these questions:
- What methods and techniques you use to motivate “sales pursuit?”
- Do social media interaction, opportunities, and triggers inherently feel like better leads?
- Do you tell/reveal to your sales force where leads came from (marketing sources)?
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