Sales Performance Is Tied To Sales Lead Performance, Which Is Tied To Your Marketing Budget
While most C-level managers realize that build-and-ship schedules are tied to sales performance, few understand that sales performance ultimately is tied to sales lead performance and the marketing budget.
Reduce your lead generating marketing funds and within 30 days inquiries will slow down in proportion to how much you have cut the budget. The frightening subsequent sales failure happens within 60-90 days when sales plummet because the pipeline of prospects has slowed to a trickle. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a prime example of cause and effect.
Clint Eastwood said it best in the movie, Sudden Impact, “It’s just a question of results. Everyone wants results, but nobody wants to do what it takes to get it done!” The result most CEO’s want is a steady increase in predictable sales performance on a month to month and quarter to quarter basis. To get that result it takes consistent spending on lead generation dollars that brings in a predictable quantity of sales inquiries which yield a predictable number of sales ready leads which leads to new sales for the company.
Consistent sales performance can be obtained by enlightened C-level managers who understand that marketing dollars spent on lead generation are a safe and predictable investment in the hands of a knowledgeable CMO who measures each and every campaign ROI.
This supposes of course, that the CMO wants to measure and be measured. Are there any CMOs out there who want to share how they are measuring their campaigns?
Simply put, everything boils down on how you can manage your leads very well. There are plenty of lead analytics software that you can definitely use today, mahjority of them web based, which can be updated in real time and prevents sales agents from working on the same leads.
But I think it's not really cutting the budget that tries to balance sales lead generation and business costs. It's choosing the best strategies that you can utilize to garner the best types of leads. This is where niche marketing and lead segmenting comes in.
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One comment: you mention "enlightened C-level managers"...I would submit that creating that enlightenment is one of the key jobs of marketing. Not just at the top but at all levels. Without that, in practice I believe your outline is usually unattainable (and almost always unsustainable) in real companies due to lack of TRUST and ACCOUNTABILITY for results. The trick is "how" to do that.
One of many critical details not to overlook: ensuring that the marketing "culture" encourages experimentation on campaigns that may ultimately fail...and captures the resulting lessons learned. This takes great skill in a marketing leader e.g. CMO....balancing this "cultural" need internal to marketing with the results-oriented accountability externally. Of course, in aggregate marketing must deliver on its commitments, but at the individual campaign level this cultural element is critical....miss that, and you risk winding up with a group of "deer in the headlights" marketing campaign managers paralyzed by fear of failure at the individual campaign level, and ultimately a marketing organization that doesn't deliver the quantity of qualified leads required.
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interesting ideas. thanks for the post. More businesses need to know that in Lead">www.insidesales.com/lead_management.php">Lead Management in general, everything starts with marketing and lead generation.
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Interesting article. I will google to find more of your work
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I completely agree with post. We are seeing more companies shift their focus to marketing, Sales 2.0 and lead generation. The days of knocking on doors or cold calling are becoming ancient history.
Our clients are using sales intelligence to identify their best prospects combined with B2B prospecting tools that help automate the prospecting process.
It is all about working SMARTER....NOT HARDER.
Walter Milestone
Sales Director
SALES FUEL
http://www.salesfuel.com
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