B2B sales leads are too important for salespeople

Every salesperson loves leads.

And in most B2B companies marketing people spend lots of effort providing them.

But too often, especially in B2B sales, there’s an artificial demarcation between the role of sales and that of marketing.

Consider the tradeshow: many companies spend thousands of marketing dollars to exhibit at important industry events. But after the show concludes, marketing simply ties a pretty ribbon around the business cards they received from prospects and tosses the leads over their shoulder to the sales manager.

B2B sales and marketing circa 2012

How can you deliver valuable information to people who express interest in your organization? How can you do it without annoying them?

How about warming up potential customers by giving them gifts of valuable content well before the salesperson bugs them by triying to sell something?

Comments

[Brett Danforth]

David,

I strongly agree with this thought. Although it was a fight with sales management after one trade-show when marketing (they just wanted the leads to sales ASAP)sent out one of three different emails within two days, depending on area of interest, with some industry editorial comments and product info. After tracking opens and link click throughs, we provided sales with a prioritized lead list with areas of interest highlighted for the opening sales conversation. Much better rate of getting these leads into our sales funnel than the "over the shoulder" toss. Of course, our small number of leads (60) made this possible-but this is typical for our B2B market, so it was well suited for enhancing our trad-show ROI through this effort.

[David Meerman Scott]

Brett, sounds like you are doing the right thing. And if you show positive results, the salespeople will be on your side in the future.

[Adele Revella]

Love the diagrams David.

A client just asked me for a short presentation on why marketers need buyer personas. Your pictures are worth a thousand words. May I use them (with attribution of course)?

[David Meerman Scott]

Hi Adele, I wish I had more artistic talent. These are just hacks. Yes, of course. Please use in any way you'd like. David

[Dwight Griesman]

Thanks for the discussion and article.

The key phrase is "valuable content", not promotion, not selling in the guise of. Value of course, is in the eye of the beholder as well.

Marketing can build the relationship prior to the hand off, and work with sales to continue to advance the relationship based on the buyer's cycle and interests after the hand off. The lines are blurring, and teams that work together with the buyer in mind will have greater success.

[David Meerman Scott]

Dwight. Yes, the lines are blurring the best companies understand that marketing = one to many and sales - one to one.

[Raúl Colón]

I have been thinking this after I got back from SXSW. So many companies with booths some I have tried connecting with them back and no reply.

The weird part is they where their spent a lot of money on a booth and now I have to fight for their attention. Their is definitely something wrong with the picture.

I think that engaging and offering something of value is the right way to go. But some companies are so behind they can't even send you a personalized email (automatic replies don't count) when you requested more info.

[Colin Warwick]

So true, David. I my previous company we had a joke that the word "lead" had two meanings. To a sales person a "lead" was someone with a purchase order in their hand. To a marketing person a "lead" was someone who was not dead and preferably not in jail.

[Stan Dubin]

I've been diligently producing a new "Hiring Tip" for over a year now. A new one goes out each week. We are now experiencing the delight of prospects and inert customers coming to us to simply BUY. And they tell us, "well, I've been reading your Hiring Tips and figured it was time to..."

We have other content as well, but the tips show up every week in their inbox, the open rate is high, and we are regularly in their minds delivering value.

[CW]

Yes, that's very true. B2B sales is important. It is yields quick returns and is also one of the most efficient ways of selling or promoting your services. By the way, some of the reviews are really good. Thanks

[Rebecca]

Awesome post! ExploreB2B is really very interesting and there is a lot of things to learn in B2B sales. Its really important as you say and also its an effective way to get maximum and instant returns. You have made an excellent review about the importance of B2B sales in this post that can be of great help.

[nlp practitioner course]

Think about the average corporate web site. There are usually only two steps. A visitor goes to the site and there is a 'contact us' form or some sort of offer (maybe for a white paper). In most companies,that 'lead' is passed over to sales and is often ignored as a 'crappy lead'. The worst thing is that in most companies, no additional marketing happens at all to that person. What a shame.