Cherry Picking of Leads: B2B Marketing to Sales Handoff

Should we allow sales to cherry pick leads that, based on lead scoring, we have deemed not to be ready for sales?

Steve Kellogg at Astadia raised the question very aptly in his Endless Lead Loop post, and it's a question we all face as we wrestle with the business process of lead scoring and handing leads from marketing to sales. Let me start by saying that there is no right answer here, and businesses that have consciously decided to allow cherry picking are not necessarily doing anything wrong.

However, I would make a strong argument for "No."

The better we get at lead scoring, the more factors we are able to consider. We look at multiple dimensions of lead scoring to split the "who" from the "how interested", we look at multiple components of a score and allow each component to only contribute a maximum amount, and we take time into account by degrading lead scores over time. Over time, as we work with sales, we are able to build a fairly accurate picture of what matters to them in a lead.

However, there will always come a time when sales is not getting, in their view, enough volume of leads, and they will ask to open up the funnel so they can "cherry pick" the leads that they deem good. Sounds harmless, as some might turn into opportunities, and those that don't can continue to be nurtured.

It is, unfortunately, not a harmless activity. If we are connecting sales with buyers who are too early in their buying process to be ready to talk to sales, we run a very real risk of alienating those buyers and pushing them away. Despite our good intentions, this cherry picking activity can have significant negative consequences, as prospective buyers who might be good opportunities later can disconnect from an otherwise promising education process early in their buying cycle.

Better than allowing cherry picking, is to keep with the same scoring methodology, but open the funnel slightly. If an A-Lead is passed to sales, and 80-100 points is deemed to be an A-Lead, then keep the same process in place, but open the funnel up so that a A-Lead is now from 60-100 points. By doing this, we prevent sales from negatively impacting early-stage prospective buyers, but still allow them more leads in the funnel.

This question is one of 8 critical lead scoring questions to consider when thinking about a lead scoring system. Read More...

Golf, Putting, Sales Reps, and Growing Revenue

My golf game needs improvement, I can admit that. However the one thing I have noticed is that every time I do manage to get the ball into the cup, it’s when I’m using my putter. The obvious conclusion then is that I should spend all of my effort working on my putting game in order to improve at golf, because that’s what gets the ball into the cup.

Well, no. That’s obviously a flawed conclusion.

It’s odd then that so many CEOs associate growing revenue with hiring sales reps. Yes, it is the sales rep who gets the deal done, but that is at the end of a long process that involves building awareness, establishing thought leadership, nurturing leads throughout a long buying process, scoring leads based on interest, and routing those leads to the right sales rep.

Investing in more sales reps is like working on your putting game. Certainly important, but only part of the picture. We all know that being able to start with a good drive, play the fairway well, and stay out of (or get out of) sand traps is an equally important part of the game. We know it, in golf, because we can clearly see how these move the ball towards the green.

In B2B marketing, however, it is not quite as obvious.

We all understand that buyers progress through their own buying cycle, and in doing so are guided by the information that we as marketers provide for them. However, unless we have mapped that buying cycle, and used an understanding of the buyers’ digital body language to determine who is at what stage of the buying process, it becomes hard to see where in the buying process we need to apply effort in order to improve our overall ability to grow revenue.

Terracotta did a great job of mapping their buying process (see their case study here), and by doing so, were able to understand which of their buyers were at which stage of the process. Doing this, in any B2B buying cycle allows us to see where our strengths are and where our weaknesses are. With this insight, we can then see where we would be best to focus our efforts.

Our ability to grow revenue is based on many factors, of which the number of sales reps is just one. Understanding our buyers’ overall buying process gives us the insight we need in order to understand where we need to invest for maximum results, much like watching our entire golf game allows us to understand whether to work on our putting, our drive, or our short game. Read More...

Lead Scoring; Points, Ranks, and Sales Handoff

Everyone uses the term "lead scoring" in demand generation. It's definitely a foundational concept for the industry, but under the covers, there are (or should be) two things happening, only one of which is scoring. The goal, of course, is to look at your prospects, and understand whether they are the right person (explicit scoring) and/or are showing the right level of interest (implicit scoring). But, implied in this is the assumption that you will do something different with those that score high from those that score low.



If that's the case, and you are looking to do something different with some leads than others, you need to think about "lead ranking" as a core part of lead scoring. Let's look at an example. Say you want to divide up your leads using explicit (fit) criteria into As, Bs, and Cs, and then divide your leads using implicit (interest) criteria into 1s, 2s, and 3s. Then, the A1s would be passed to sales, the A3s would be nurtured, the C1s would be cultivated by inside sales to get to the right contact, and the C3s would be dropped (obviously the other categories would be dealt with also, but for the sake of simplicity bear with me).



Here's the challenge. We're now looking at two distinct undertakings:

1. Finding the right mix of criteria to score the leads in order to determine whether they are A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3. (See http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/dimensions-of-lead-scoring.html for a discussion on why you really need both dimensions of scoring)



2. Building the business process for appropriate follow-up, nurture, or cultiviation of the leads once it has been decided that they are an A1, A3, or C1.

These undertakings are actually very separate, and both will need a lot of tuning over time. As your website changes, you launch new marketing campaigns, or you tweak the relative weights of one criteria over another, the scores of leads will change. Likewise, as you add sales people, change territories, or alter quotas, you may wish to send more leads of lower quality, or less leads of higher quality.

Separating the "lead scoring" - ie assigning 0-100 points based on activity - from the "lead ranking" - ie determining what is ranked as a 1, 2, or 3 - lets you build your business processes independent of any tweaking and optimization. Your field sales team may get A1 and B1 leads, your inside sales team may get A2, B2, and C1 leads, and you may route A3, B3, and C2 to your nurture marketing programs. Regardless of what you do to change your approach to scoring, or what the thresholds are for each rank, your team knows what to do when they see an A1 lead coming their way.

Not only can you better build your sales or nurture marketing follow-up processes based on abstracting the lead score from the lead rank, but you can look back at your sales successes after a few quarters, and by comparing the underlying score against the sales success rates, you can get good insights into whether you are able to loosen the ranking criteria and have more leads flow through to sales, or would be best to tighten the criteria and have less leads of higher quality.

This question is one of 8 critical lead scoring questions to consider when thinking about a lead scoring system.

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