Where do you put CRM/Sales created leads on your Success Path/Model?

[Anonymous]

I've been told that new-from-CRM leads should go first in as Sales Accepted Leads on the model (I know every model is different). Is this consistent with what others are doing? Does it negatively affect funnel metrics from SAL downwards?

[Devraj_Grewal]

Naor,

I would move this discussion to Products​ as it is Marketo-specific and you will receive a more prompt response.

[Justin_Norris1]

Naor Chazan​

This is one of those things that every company does a little bit differently.

My personal views are:

1) Sales created leads should go directly to SAL (or equivalent stage), with the exception of contacts like Accounts Payable, Legal etc. customers, which should be shunted off the path to some bucket where you know to exclude them from marketing emails.

2) They should not be deemed to pass through earlier marketing-related stages as it will inflate those metrics, e.g., they were never marketing qualified so we shouldn't pretend they were. Yes, uncorrected, this will lead to unusual ratios which leads to the next point...

3) It's useful to have some dimension (either in the lead source field or through a boolean checkbox etc.) to indicate whether someone is marketing or sales generated. This will allow you to filter them out of reports and get a clear view of the funnel from the perspective you want.

Side note: the new "Demand Unit Waterfall" from Sirius Decisions really throws this on its head and renders these sorts of questions less relevant. There's no easy way as of yet to operationalize it in Marketo, that I can see, but it's interesting to consider how it alleviates this sort of concern from a reporting perspective.

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Justin Norris | Perkuto​​

[Anonymous]

This is very helpful and also the way we had it set up for the years prior, so now that Im ony implementation #5 I wanted to ensure my logic was right. I like your other suggestion for lead source as well. Marketing technically doesn't use the lead source field anymore as we've adopted a utm parameter based approach which captures FT and LT source in separate fields. I think we're still working through why the sales guys and sales management would want to leverage the in-built Lead Source field for their own reporting, so maybe we can still use that field given that ANY value there other than "Marketing" will indicate sales generated.

[Anonymous]

Hey Justin - the more we think about this again - why shouldn't leads from sales go in as MCL? I mean we do tag them as being Sales Sourced, but I feel like an MQL is an MQL regardless of source of origin. If a sales person enters a lead into SFDC and we nurture them, or if they visit our site and begin to get engaged, shouldn't that all be the same? Similarly, if a lead is put in and is abandoned by sales, we'd like to trigger the same alerts as a regular (Marketing sourced) MQL, so I don't see the reason why they shouldn't start as MCL to begin with, unless they have an active opportunity or are a contact aligned to a customer account.

[Veronica_Holme4]

As Justin said, so many organisations do this differently and it seems to come to business philosophy more than anything! If you are going to say "an MQL is an MQL regardless of marketing or sales sourced" I would just say:

1) Make sure you are applying this consistently across the board, and

2) Ensure that your lead sources are assigned correctly for ALL leads so you can in reporting differentiate down the line a lead sourced by sales or marketing. It will become important.

[Justin_Norris1]

Naor Chazan​

It's a good question.

The scenario I was envisioning in response to your question is one in which sales makes contact with someone (e.g., prospecting on LinkedIn) and begins to engage them directly, on a one-to-one basis. In these cases I believe they should be considered SAL or SQL (as the sales person has obviously excepted) and that having them pass through a marketing stage is misleading, as marketing shouldn't get credit for an MQL that it did not influence.

However, if sales is just entering names en-masse (e.g., importing lists from a prospecting tool) but then the names subsequently go into a general nurture track and marketing engages ones of those people to a state of sales-readiness, I definitely believe they should be considered an MQL.

My feeling is that the issue to consider is less one of source (marketing vs. sales) but more of the role that marketing played in making them sales-ready.

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Justin Norris | Perkuto

[Anonymous]

Justin - I was under the (untested) impression that if we put sales entered leads as MCL, for example, and then they were immediately added to a Stage 0 opp, which for us is Sales Accepted status, it would not show the conversion taking the lead from MCL > MEL > MQL > SAL ? Do you have any information contrary to this assumption. I thought conversion metrics only look at when a lead flows literally through the step, and not "over" it ?

[Justin_Norris1]

Naor Chazan​

You are correct, they are not automatically deemed to pass through each of the stages. It would depend how you set it up.

If an MCL is your version of a "Known" or "Name" record where it just means a person enters your DB, then there is no harm in starting them at this stage and then going right to Sales Accepted. A lot depends on how you define these stages and intend to report on them.