The number of sales leads a business needs is a great point of contention between sales and marketing teams within an organization. Sales executives always find they could use more to keep the sales funnel flowing, while marketing executives believe they’re providing enough. In fact, marketing professionals say their lead generation activities are 35% more successful than sales professionals think they are.
Marketing needs to send leads to sales
To keep salespeople neck-deep in sales leads that will help them meet their targets, the marketing department needs to ensure that it is sending qualified sales leads their way. It’s not constructive to send over unqualified leads that haven’t indicated interest in the business product or service. Case in point: Poor sales opportunity qualification is responsible 32.5% of the time for a company not meeting its sales lead generation targets, according to The Black Report™.
There’s just no greater waste of time for salespeople than trying to wedge uninterested parties down the sales funnel. In fact, it’s terrible for business. Of companies that aren’t meeting their revenue targets, 70% generate fewer than 100 sales leads monthly, and only 5% generate more than 2,500.
Fill the gap lead generation
Clearly, there’s a gap that can be filled through better communication between sales and marketing teams. Marketing can help ensure sales teams meet their quotas by being more invested in this process and not turning over leads too early. There is also ample opportunity to take advantage of third-party sales lead generation companies to keep the sales funnel full. In this scenario, expenses in acquiring these leads will be a valuable investment, not just another expense without satisfactory results.
