What leads go to sales?

[Anonymous]

We are about to launch out lead scoring programs but we are getting some push back from sales. Our plan is to only send MQL's to sales for follow-up. However, Sales wants ALL leads and jsut display the scores–so they can determine the priority for follow-up.

Is anyone out there doing something like this? I apprecitate any insight!

[Anonymous]

Hey Jace,

We will be switching to a similar model soon. We received the same pushback, but it was alleviated when we told them that any Lead that Sales generates will go straight to them. Then, any Lead that we generate will be Nurtured but we will keep the threshold minimal until we gain a better understanding of how Leads interact with our website, WPs, trials, etc. 

One key point to make to Sales is that not every name you acquire is a true Lead. In order to pass them interested parties, nurturing and some top-funnel qualifying is necessary. But, this all depends on the amount of Leads that are being created as a whole. I would also go back and look for Leads that have been generated in the past 3-6 months with no activities associated and still sit in Open (or whatever your equivalent is) Lead Status. If there is a large number, you can use that in your discussion to show that there is too much information and Leads are being overlooked/forgotten.

But don't worry, this discussion is pretty universal and you are not alone!

[Anonymous]

Hi Jace,

Yes - this is a common thing to do!

Here's an example:

A company has lead scores in such a way that everything with a score of 100+ is "MQL" and is marked as such.

Then everything with a score between 50 - 99 is "Engaged" and is marked as such.

So the sales rep gets a report or a view in Salesforce.com of all their uncontacted "leads" by score. Some are marked as MQL, and therefore have an associated SLA around then (ie, the sales rep MUST do something about them, contact them, disqualify them right away etc), and some are marked as Engaged and are visibile to the rep but do not have an associated SLA. The rep has a choice as to contact them or not.

Hope that makes sense.

You can make a lot more lead visible to the rep than is necessary, but there should always be an SLA around the hottest leads, so that you can continue to learn and improve your scoring formula.