I was working with a client last week whose salespeople were complaining that marketing was generating poor leads. This is a classic complaint that I have heard for years! Sales blames marketing for poor leads and marketing says that sales doesn’t know how to convert the leads. So who is right? I like to work backwards to identify where the problem is coming from. The first thing to look for is - do the salespeople have the skills, knowledge, belief and understand the strategy necessary to convert the lead? If they don’t then it doesn’t matter if the lead is high quality or poor quality because the sales rep is going to mess it up. If they do have the skills, knowledge, belief and understand the strategy then we have to look at what is behind the lead generation program. For example do they have a corporate sales and marketing strategy, do they understand what the ideal client profile looks like, what was the offer, who was it made to, how was it made, etc. There are a lot of things one needs to look at when troubleshooting a marketing program but you get the idea.

Unfortunately there is usually a little truth to the complaints from both sides. If you asked the salespeople they would say they have the skills to convert the lead. Like a good detective who always confirms a suspects alibi I did a quick little role playing to confirm they had the skills. Wouldn’t you know it - every single rep that I role played with choked on the spot! In martial arts they have a phrase that says “you fight like you train”. In our world “you sell like you role play”. I had the sales managers do a mandatory skills and drills exercise for 30 minutes each day that just focused on lead conversion. By the end of the week the lead conversion rate was up exponentially. Now that is the start not the end. If we want to optimize what is going on I would look at conversion ratios to identify who needs some additional help, who is doing well and who has some best practices worthy of sharing with the teams. Also if I give feedback to marketing about each lead then they can use that data to fine tune their efforts. Imagine what would be possible if sales got 10% better at lead conversion and marketing got 10% more leads you would have a 20% increase with minimal effort!