Cost Effectiveness Does Not Work On Sales Leads
A very simple recommendation: qualify first and count second. People generally worry little about the cost per sales leads that marketing generates. What they look at is how many of those sales leads become viable sale opportunities.
Focusing on the cost of sales leads is an unrealistic measure because you do not know how likely the information you receive about your customers is to be turned into actual sales.
Financially you may have to refrain yourself from only focusing on the cost of sales leads. Marketing people who think too much about how these costs affect their budget do not really understand how the information is being used by the sales departments. This is probably the biggest reason why your company needs to take efforts into harmonizing the work of both departments do that one know what the other needs and can use.
When accepting sales leads into the pipeline, think about the quality that you need in order to reach your goals. You can do this better when your marketing department has trained people, and when the process is designed appropriately. The quality of the sales leads has a great influence on your sales and therefore in your return of investments.
If your company is using the "cost effective" model when it comes to sales leads, you had better think again. When using this mental frame your natural tendency is to decrease costs often at the expense of quality. It is crucial that a company realizes that many of the sales leads are not high quality sales leads.
Therefore, ask yourself these questions:
Is the information contained in these sales leads useful for the sales department?
Will these leads turn into loyal customers?
Many times, the pressure for Leads forces marketing to share them when they have not reached a mature point and are not really qualified.
The truth of the matter is that unqualified sales leads can likely be translated into important input losses for your sales department, and therefore affecting your bottom line. Unqualified leads take up your salespeople's time and money. And this is why we cannot measure the cost of sales leads using this framework.
You will be damaging the reputation of your marketing department if you allow them to share unqualified sales leads.