Lead Management
Lead Management is the process of acquiring and managing leads until the point where they make a purchase, enabled by the alignment between sales and marketing
- Lead Management Process
- Lead Qualification and Scoring
- Lead Generation is a sales and marketing exercise. The inherent collaboration is the root of all upsides and downsides.
- People and process always beat technology and tools. Technology is great, but it doesn't make a bad process good or turn poor sellers into rock stars.
- Zoom all the way in to an individual lead flowing through. Then zoom out. Dashboards are great, but there is no substitute for looking at real leads and people.
Important to note: This section outlines a general approach to Lead Management and Scoring. Please ensure you get in touch with your regional digital leader before creating your own Lead Management and Scoring model to make sure you adhere to the latest standards of lead management and scoring in your region.
Lead Management is a multi-step process, requiring careful alignment between Marketing, Inside and Field Sales. This is an illustration of the high-level lead management process:
The Service Level Agreement (SLA, handshake in illustration above) is a 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. Speed is everything when it comes to following up with leads
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
Click on the image to enlarge
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
The first step to defining a “good lead” is to get alignment between the marketing and sales teams.
2. Define Lead
Leads can be defined by different data points you acquire through the buying journey to build out the customer profile further.
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Demographics
When profiling leads, look at demographically quantifiable identifiers that characterize your lead population and organizational characteristics:
- Organization name
- Site of care
- Organization size
- Role
- Years of experience
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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
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BANT
Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline attributes 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 it align with your sales cycle?
3. Define Lead Stages
To agree on lead handoff qualifications, lead stages must be defined.
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 which point a prospective customer turns into a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and ensures a smooth hand-off to the sales teams, pushing the customer further through the engagement funnel and ideally bringing the sale to a close.
To facilitate a smooth handover between marketing and sales teams, you must define service level agreements (SLAs) with clear criteria for handover.
Service Level Agreement - A 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 the 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.
The first step is to work with sales and determine the most critical demographic and behavioral attributes and then assign scores related to the magnitude of the attribute.
The next step is determining what criteria and score qualify a potential leads inquiry status to align on key strategies to move them through the funnel.
The third step is to ensure you implement negative scoring for leads who do not meet the demographic and behavioral threshold.
We recommend leveraging the lead scoring model template to determine the 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
