Top B2B Lead Management Issues

The B2B market place is in a state of rapid transformation. The advent of social media, inbound marketing and automation solutions have had a significant effect on how buyers interact with suppliers. This has caused a major power shift. What used to be a vendor-led process is now controlled by buyers who engage the sales team much later in the buying process. Instead of waiting to receive information from the vendor, buyers are instead turning to online resources and peers as a means of research and vendor selection.

We are in the middle of the Buyer 2.0 transformation and organizations need to address those issues that hinder their marketing and sales success including:

1. Data Issues
   Any successful campaign starts with good data. However, many companies struggle with multiple databases, data integrity issues and incomplete data. A lack of data process is one the biggest obstacles to getting a positive ROI on marketing and sales investments.
2. No Consensus on the Number of Leads Needed
   Most marketing organizations develop their demand generation strategies with no clear idea of what success looks like. The goal for many is to fill the top of the funnel with as many leads as possible and pass them all to sales. These responses rarely translate into quality leads, and therefore are largely ignored by sales. Instead of shooting in the dark, marketing and sales need to engage in a lead planning process so there is a clear understanding on how many leads marketing needs to generate in order to meet sales goals.
3. Not Qualifying Leads
   Lead management is about delivering quality leads, not just a quantity of leads. However, many sales and marketing organizations struggle because they have not taken the time to define terms such as response, lead, marketing-qualified lead, sales-accepted lead, etc. This lack of shared lead qualification definition is an obstacle to organizational alignment and success.
4. Not Nurturing Leads
   80% of all first time responders are not in a buying mode. Yet in many B2B companies, first responders are immediately forwarded to sales. More than likely, these prospects are not ready to talk to anyone. The last thing sales wants is to receive these unqualified leads. The majority of responses generated in any campaign should be developed further by creating a lead nurturing process.
5. Leads “Dying” with Sales
   Lead Routing?  What’s so challenging about automating routing leads to sales into a nurturing campaign.  We’ll admit, not much.  The bigger obstacle lies in the hundreds, even thousands of leads that land in sales’ hands only to die in either your CRM or other sales database.  And yet if routed back to a nurture campaign, these leads are just as likely to turn into a closed deal as all the others.  Developing a closed-loop lead routing process will eliminate dying leads and more importantly, lost revenue.
6. Measuring Campaign Success & ROI
   Measuring the return on marketing and sales programs is one of the key areas where marketers struggle the most. Many organizations launch a marketing campaign with no clear idea on how to measure success. After the campaign launches, they sift through the data trying to determine if it was a success or failure (if they even measure it at all). The effect of not having a measurement process often leads to inefficient use of resources, lack of program support, and even budget cuts.
7. Manual Processes
   Many marketers are trying to engage their changing buyer while working within a manual construct. A manual based approach will leave large gaps in the lead management process as there are too many moving parts and pieces. While marketing automation cannot deliver lead management, it can enable the lead management process.

The first step in overcoming these obstacles is to find the gaps in your current lead management process. An Audit based on The Annuitas Group’s Lead Management Framework is a great place to start.