Yes!
I like to do this through a comprehensive Lifecycle Processing program that triggers separate stages.
Lifecycle Statuses:
- 0 - Processing: Lead is created.
- 1 - Marketing Accepted Lead (MAL): Lead is demographically qualified.
- 2 - Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): Lead is behaviorally qualified.
- 3 - Sales Accepted Lead (SAL): Lead is getting original contact from Inside Sales/XDR team.
- 4 - Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): Lead has an open opportunity.
- 5 - Customer: Lead has a closed-won opportunity.
- 9 - Disqualified: Lead is not demographically qualified or is junk or other miscellaneous options.
Lifecycle Processing Program in Marketo:
A lead comes in and it goes through original processing in the first Lifecycle Status. Things like calculating lead source, getting enriched by data enrichment, getting timestamped, etc. If the lead is demographically qualified, it moves onto the next status, which is Marketing Accepted Lead.
Demographic Score moves leads to Marketing Accepted Lead (MAL).
Demographic Gating marks the difference between a lead hitting demographic requirements or not. This originally came up when I was doing huge volumes of online advertising for B2B, and we wanted an immediate feedback loop on how each source of leads was bringing in demographically qualified prospects or demographically unqualified candidates. Basically, we add up demographic scores and then if it hits a certain threshold (arbitrary, but let's call it 50 points), then we mark them as Demographically Qualified, which triggers the movement to Marketing Accepted Lead (MAL).
Screenshot:
Behavior Score moves leads from MAL to Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).
Marketing Accepted Leads get marketed to with the purpose of increasing their behavior to the point that they're ready to have a positive conversation with sales (become a Marketing Qualified Lead). That's an arbitrary threshold, but I like 150 generally. Once a lead either hits that arbitrary threshold or fills out a Hand-Raise form (demo request, contact sales, free trial request, etc.), they get moved into Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).
SAL+
Then it becomes an inside salesperson's job to take ownership over the lead, reach them on the phone, and set a meeting with an AE. Then the AE's job is to move the lead toward an open opportunity with a defined dollar amount and timeline, which then either leads to Closed/Lost or Closed/Won.
Justin Norris had a good point about translating the Behavior Score into a "lead grade" that's more easily comprehensible by a sales team, with big letter grades that people can scan instead of having to interpret an actual behavior score. That'd work pretty well for you here with the sales enablement part.
I walked through the program in a live demo at my session at Marketo Summit 2015, called "Architecting a Robust and Scalable Marketo Instance (start at 6:40-7:40 for Lifecycle Processing, wa...." The screenshot I posted here is a slightly-updated V2 of the Lifecycle Processing program, but it's generally the same idea.
Cheers,
Edward Unthank | Founder, Etumos
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