Do you have your process for each of these steps documented and understood by key stakeholders? If not, start now. You won't regret it.

To give you a hand, I've updated a figure from Lead Generation for the Complex Sale on lead management. (Click above Image to enlarge or Download PDF)

I believe there are two funnels - a marketing funnel and a sales funnel. The marketing pipeline is managing the customer interactions from first contact through to a viable sales opportunity (aka sales ready lead). The success of your marketing funnel directly impacts that of the sales funnel. The bigger and better your marketing funnel, the bigger and better your sales funnel.

Within the marketing funnel, I find that most marketers need to put more attention on the processes of lead qualification and nurturing.

Here are the top three issues:

Inquiries are improperly handed off to sales without being qualified.

A lead nurturing program has not been implemented.

Sales has not been given the means to hand unsuccessful leads back to marketing for further work or nurturing on their behalf.

Like other business process improvement initiatives, lead management must start with the proper mindset. Lead management is a process that can be documented, measured and refined.

It’s certainly is not easy, so start with the mindset that lead management is a process and make that process as simple a possible. Don’t forget that software does NOT create collaboration. Make sure everyone on in the process has “bought in” and understands their role. Only then will you have the foundation that will support a more complex lead management practices.

What’s a Lead?

recent report by Aberdeen Group, Sales Effectiveness: Helping Sales Sell, concludes: “The number one issue for most CEOs and marketers is lead generation—getting more leads to their sales team.” The number one desire for salespeople, however, is more selling time with sales-ready opportunities.

You must realize that the extreme time pressure salespeople face—especially those with a complex sale—requires them to ignore what is not immediately relevant and highly likely to produce revenue. Why? They are not paid to do anything else. And that makes quality more important than quantity to them.

If you are in marketing, are you currently sending your sales team qualified leads or merely inquiries? There is a difference. An inquiry is an interested party who has requested information and needs some level of assistance. But inquiries are not leads. A lead isn’t a lead until it’s been qualified.

Numerous lead qualification programs have shown that as little as 5 percent to 15 percent of all inquiries are truly sales-ready opportunities. If inquiries are sent to the sales team as leads without first being qualified, then many will turn out not ready for a salesperson to attempt to close and thus are more or less a waste of time for sales.

The biggest mistake made by marketers is to give mere inquiries to a salesperson. When inquiries are handed off without being methodically qualified, it doesn’t take the sales department long to start viewing all marketing-generated “leads” with skepticism. And without well-defined criteria of what constitutes a qualified sales lead, the wheat mixed in with the chaff has little chance of improving to sales-ready status or being accepted by the salesforce.

There is a systematic process for successful qualification that includes specific steps. This article highlights those steps, while paying special attention to the critical role the telephone plays in that process.

Define and Agree On What the Word “Lead” Means

I’ve spoken with hundreds of companies, and less than 10 percent have a definition of what a lead means that is clear, written down and unanimously agreed on by sales and marketing. Even in small companies, I can ask three salespeople, “What is a good lead?” and get three different answers. This question goes to the very heart of the lead qualification process. It seeks to identify the relative quality of a lead compared to a predetermined standard.

Companies that don’t ask this essential question are relegating their lead generation program to ruin. Failure to properly answer this question often leads to miscommunication, poor teamwork between sales and marketing, and ultimately missed revenue targets and wasted budget dollars.

For the lead definition to be useful in its application, it must be applied to all leads, regardless of source—e.g., teleprospecting, Web site, inbound calls, direct mail, event attendees. The need for the definition to apply to all sources is critical to implementing a lead management system. It sets a standard by which your lead generation efforts can be measured. Otherwise, you will just be comparing apples to oranges. Most importantly, the lead definition must be universally agreed on by both sales and marketing.

Breakdowns in lead management often occur when:

· Lead generation is viewed as a series of campaigns and not as an ongoing conversation

· More leads are indiscriminately sought without properly managing those on hand

· A single tactic is employed, rather than a multi-modal approach

· Inquiries are improperly handed off to sales without proper lead qualification

· A lead nurturing program has not been implemented

· Sales has not been given the means to hand unsuccessful leads back to marketing for further work

· The database (CRM) is ineffectively utilized or poorly maintained