Lead Generation Companies | Biggest Challenges for CMOs
A few months ago, MarketingSherpa asked this question of 287 Chief Marketing Officers
“Which of the following marketing challenges are currently most pertinent for your organization?”
The answers probably surprise no one - especially if you’ve talked to your sales teams lately.
Generating high quality sales leads is the single biggest challenge in business today. And it’s even bigger than it was last year.
Generating High Quality Leads is the problem that Find New Customers helps with. We help mid-sized companies (150 to 5,000 employees) who sell complex products to businesses to design, develop and implement world-class B2B demand generation programs to fill sales funnels with high quality sales leads.
I recently sat down with a marketing executive at a 1/2 billion software company and asked “If I were to call a marketing automation software vendor, give them a credit card number and get a log-in, what changed in your business?” The answer: Absolutely nothing.
The key point: For you to fix the challenge of creating quality sales leads in your business, it will take people, processes and plans - and not just software.
So my question is - why is this even a goal for Marketing or CMOs. Unless a CMO has sold, and sold in the last 24 months successfully, I can’t imagine they’d be equipped to do this. How did we get to the point that we thought this was possible. Also, @DanWaldo & @iannarino posit that sales orgs are partly to blame in defining what makes a “High Quality” lead. Those two gents believe that the only way (I’m paraphrasing) sellers would value a lead as HQ, would be if the lead came home with them and curled up in their lap.
Thanks for your comment.Love the line that sellers would only value a lead if it curled up in their lap.
In response, 8 out of 10 leads at Marketo originate in marketing, It is barely over 2 out of 10 in most companies. In most companies, expensive salespeople are generating leads - which is a huge waste of time and money. Also Marketo spends .90 for every dollar spent on sales. The industry average is barely 10 cents.
Companies need to step up and move toward the Marketo model. Buyer personas, keywords, agreed lead definitions, content marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, sales enablement - those are the future. Wake up and embrace it.
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