Lead Management
Lead management is the process of acquiring and managing leads until the point where they make a purchase, enabled by alignment between sales and marketing
- Lead Management Process
- Lead Qualification and Scoring
Approach to defining your lead management process
Sales and Marketing Lead Alignment
Sales and marketing need to create a universal lead definition that is agreed upon by both teams.
Define Lead
Determine key attributes of your lead to help profile based on campaign targeting and goals
Define lead stages and handover
Determine definition of stages across customer buying journey
Map Strategies to the Engagement Funnel
Define criteria for different stages of your lead management flow and develop strategies or actions to move lead through the funnel
1. Sales and marketing lead alignment
First step to defining a “good lead” is to get alignment between marketing and sales team
2. Define Lead
Leads can be defined by different data points you acquire through the buying journey to further build out their customer profile
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Demographics
When profiling leads, look at demographics quantifiable identifiers which characterize your lead population and organizational characteristics
- Organization name
- Site of care
- Organization size
- Role
- Years of experience
- etc.
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Behavioural
Behavioural attributes are actions your lead is taking through the buying journey that indicate intent of purchase
- Download brochure
- Website visit
- View video
- Ask to speak to sales rep
- Visit tradeshow
- etc.
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BANT
Budget, Authority Need and timeline attributes that can help determine a lead’s place in the buying process
- Budget: Can this lead afford tour product or service?
- Authority: Does your lead have the authority to purchase your product?
- Need: Is there a pain point that your product or service can solve?
- What is your lead’s purchasing timeframe, does that align with your sales cycle?
3. Define Lead Stages
Lead stages must be defined to agree on lead handoff qualifications
Lead scoring is a methodology used to rank and qualify prospective customers
What is it?
Lead scoring is an effective way to help marketing and sales align on and identify leads that are more sales-ready or have more perceived value to the organization
How does it work?
It's a model that determines at what point a prospective customer turns into a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and ensures a smooth hand-off to the sales teams, who then pushes the customer further through the engagement funnel and ideal brings it to a close.
To facilitate smooth handover between marketing and sales teams, define service level agreements (SLA’s) with clear criteria for handover
Service Level Agreement: Cross-team commitment that establishes a shared set of expectations around each team’s responsibilities which includes
- Criteria for lead qualification, aligned between marketing and sales
- Clear timeline and responsibilities for handover to ensure lead is nurtured properly and in a timely fashion
4. Map Strategies to Engagement Funnel
Understand your lead’s buying journey, map the flow and define criteria and strategies to move lead through the funnel
Define what qualifies needs nurturing versus unqualified as your lead moves through the engagement funnel
Key levers can be optimized during the campaign if there are significant number of unqualified leads handed over to sales
Work with the sales team to determine key actions they must take post handover from marketing
As a lead interacts with BD, their lead score grows based on specific variables until it's considered nurtured enough to become a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and is handed over to sales
Lead scoring model considers demographic and behavioral attributes to reach the threshold of a marketing qualified lead and subsequent handover to sales
First step is to work with sales and determine the most critical demographic and behavioural attributes and then assign scores related to the magnitude of the attribute
Next step is to determine what criteria, and score qualify a potential leads inquiry status to align on key strategies to move them through the funnel
Third step is to ensure you implement negative scoring for leads who do not meet the demographic and behavioural threshold
We recommend leveraging the lead scoring model template to determine attributes and priority of potential leads
Step-by-Step Guide
- The lead scoring model is governed by the Corporate Digital and Analytics team, and the Region to ensure consistency across BUs. Please schedule a workshop with them early on in hte process.
- The lead scoring model is completed by the OOT and sales team (Inside Sales and Field Sales) and is enabled in Marketo
- Enter the weight of the demographic and behavioural attributes. Total weight cannot exceed 50% for the demographic section. Both sections must total to 100% - i.e., 50%/50%/30%/79% etc.
- Enter the name of the corresponding Marketo field. If field does not exist in Marketo, you will need to create it. Note: if you want the field/ info in CRM (e.g., SFDC), you need to create it in the model first.
- Next enter the demographic and behavioural attributes that matter in your attributes
- Enter a unique set of attribute choices. These choices should be in things like drop-down field in forms, radial buttons etc.
- Enter the priority of each attribute choice on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the most important. You can have the same priority level for different attribute choices.
- Enter a negative priority, such as -10, to create a negative score within a demographic or behavioural attribute
Customer attributes can be mapped by persona to forecast what key actions, and tactics, will help reach the BD standard threshold
