Do you send all inquiries to your CRM?

[Anonymous]

My sales team wants to see all inquiries that are generated on a weekly basis - regardless of lead score. They say based on the current estimated volume that they will be able to follow our SLA and reach out to everyone.

I'd still like to keep an MQL/AQL score in mind for people to understand if my campaigns are working (am I targeting the right people), and measure velocity to know if I have enough campaigns going at any given time.

Is anyone else doing this? Do you set up flows in Marketo just to sync everyone as they are created?

Does it make sense that sales doesn't care about lead score but marketing does? What am I missing by doing it this way? What are the risks that I'm not thinking of?

My sales team is still volume focused (40+ outbound dials per day) and that isn't changing any time soon. So, I see their point. But also believe in what a scoring model can do. Help!

[Jason_Hamilton1]

I am a fan of syncing all leads to CRM, and then holding them in a queue until they qualify for handoff

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Jason,

I agree with you.

There is one difficulty with this method though, which is that you have to redesign complex workflows for lead assignment when they become mature.

The reason is because Marketo does not trigger again SFDC lead assignment rules on lead update. It only does it on lead creation.

Hence the idea that would save very significant time on Marketo implementation projects where assignment rules are already in place on SFDC side:

-Greg

[Alex_Stanton1]

I like the fact that lead assignment can also be triggered in Mkto. I needed to put leads through a round robin only under certain circumstances and Mkto gave me that flexibility -  I set up a two-tier round robin in Mkto (two separate triggered campaigns based on two sets of actions) and it is working as expected.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Alex,

I understand your points.

Nevertheless, there are many organizations where lead assignment falls under sales responsibility. And you do not want sales to have to come to set up smart campaigns in Marketo It' a kind of separation of duties and separation of tools.

Another scenario is that lead assignment responds to very complex and changing business rules that apply not only to Marketo sourced leads but also to some other sources (such as third party telemarketing agencies entering the leads directly in SFDC through API or a portal). These scenarios have been set up far before Marketo was introduced in the organization through complex custom development in SFDC.

In all those case, lead assignment will be left to SFDC. Marketo will manage lead status changes and status changes will trigger lead routing.

-Greg

[Alex_Stanton1]

I tend to favor syncing all leads to SFDC (and it also helps preventing duplicates). When I sync pre-MQL records to SFDC I try to assign to a non-sales user that owns them until they MQL.  Do you have a full lead lifecycle (with model) set up?

[Anonymous]

Hi Alex,

We launched a model in 2011 and have been working on revamping it for a few months now. Our original scoring model was a 1x single score based on explicit data only. We want to move to a explicit + implicit model. We originally started this work when we had different sales leadership in place, and when our reps weren't selling as consultatively as they are now. So, with new leaders, new sales standards and new sales processes, we're revising the model, and that's why it's coming up.

Our initial attempt to sync Marketo to our instance of Dynamics never fully came to light. In my funnel, I can see inquiries, I can see opportunities and I can see closes. I have no picture of the middle part of the process. We need to clean up and standardize a lot of stuff along the way, so I guess that's why I'm more open to letting the top of the funnel be wide open, since we have a lot of work to do on the middle and bottom parts too.

[Anonymous]

We sync practically everything to SFDC. I have a threshold for what leads are assigned to SDRs and another threshold for MQLs that determine SLAs. If the SDRs are really strapped for leads they have the ability to follow up/prospect into the leads that have no met the threshold, but there is no SLA attached until they take ownership. This is working well our North American team, however our EMEA and APJ team don't have an SDR function so I have a higher threshold for assignment to AEs. I even have separate SLAs for AEs as they just don't seem motivated to call a lead within 30-minutes...

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Hi Heather,

That's a long a complex topic

You can start reading the posts on this thread : MQL set-up​

Also, here a few ideas with regards to the change management process you need to undertake here:

1. You can start with publishing scoring information to the sales, including using Marketo Sales Insight starts and flames. You can add them to lead views and lead forms. Sales will very quickly learn to prioritize leads using these visual indicators. After some time, you will be in a better position to engage a discussion about hiding leads with no start/no flame (low score leads).
2. A second discussion you can raise is the fact that there is a difference between seeing all leads (which they have to be able to do) and setting priorities on leads that should be called which is what score is for.
3. Another path you can take it measure the real capability of sales to handle all the leads in the database. It the number of leads is really higher, then having a way to set priorities soon becomes obvious even to the most stubborn sales.
4. The 4th way to look at this is to measure the lead acceptance vs score. If scoring is appropriate*, then the correlation should be high, thus setting a clear argument in favor of not wasting time with low score leads.

Once things start to get clearer on everyone's mind, yes, as stated by Josh, you should continue to send all leads to the CRM, but you can "host" some of them in lead queues, until they have enough score to be sent to sales.

-Greg

* with the right behavior score in place and a good mix between demographic/firmographic and behavior

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much, Gregoire! I know it's a complex topic, but my boss is very good at distilling things down to a "headline," so wanted to try to pose a basic question in a very complex world.

I do appreciate the thorough response and link to the other discussion. Big help!

[Josh_Hill13]

It's ok to do this. Maybe not ideal from the standard model we are taught. I do recommend syncing all leads to the CRM, however, I usually hold non MQLs in a queue before they are ready.

As long as sales is happy to dial, this is ok. The question is really does the company want to do this and what kind of inquiries? Are these leads requesting contact or did they download paper? Big difference.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Josh. Appreciate the validation and yes, I agree - big difference between those requesting contact vs. just checking out our content. They'd like access to all.

When you say you hold non MQLs in a queue before they are ready, are you then using a workflow in CRM to "show" them to lead owners?

Thanks much.

[Alex_Stanton1]

Heather, note that an SFDC queue will work fine if the records you send to it are SFDC Leads. If Marketo sends an already existing SFDC Contact to a queue, SFDC will create a new lead, hence a duplicate.

[Anonymous]

I think that sending over all leads is a bad idea but it can lead to a better understanding of your leads.

You can test this out by sending over all leads for a while and monitoring what happens.  How many opps are created, revenue etc...

From this data you may find a group or two that should be sent over right away, you may see some other groups of leads that are less successful.  In the next iteration you may sync certain leads and not others based on this trial period.

[Anonymous]

I totally agree this is a bad idea, but as a partner for my sales team, I don't want to fight battles that aren't worth fighting, you know? Thanks for your insights.