How Poor Lead Tracking is Hurting Profit Margin

Dear Bob,

We spend a good deal of resources generate leads for our sales team only to see that the leads are not being followed up.  How do I get my CEO to get the sales and manger managers in the same room to make lead follow up a priority?

​-- Jane

---

Dear Jane,

There are two primary reasons that lead follow up doesn’t happen. First, the leads are not what I would call Marketing Qualified. Second, there is not enough vision by the CEO, CSO and CMO into what is happening with leads, or better yet what is not happening.

Marketing Qualified Leads

​Account managers will focus on efforts that put dollars in their pocket. As marketers we must recognize that is a truism. As such, marketing must make any leaded passed on an account manager as qualified. Marketing Qualified means that a lead meets the qualification you have for industry type, size, product and whatever sales has provided you as the top three items that a good lead must contain. And that you have included this information with the lead as well verifying the company name, website, and phone number. 

---

Regardless of what you think account managers are doing with their time, don’t give them another excuse to waste more time.

​Lead-Tracking Vision
Everyone who has an interest in the cost of leads must have a daily dashboard put in front of them. A dashboard that displays the leads assigned by date, and current status through the sales process, by account manager. You should also be using Campaign Response activities to assign leads with expected actions built into the Response Code feature of your Dynamics CRM. This is the best way to track leads-to-opportunities in Dynamics 365.  

As the marketer you are held accountable for showing management that your lead generation efforts are worth the resources that have been assigned to you. Without providing your managers with vision into the process how would they know that there is an issue? 
​
You many find the following short video helpful to your efforts at getting your message across.