It’s important to think of lead generation as a process, rather than an isolated event, or a series
of campaigns. You can optimize demand generation with ongoing testing and refinement. This will help you generate higher quality results more cost-effectively (i.e. reduce expense-to-revenue ratio) and improve overall ROI.
Think about your lead generation process as being controlled on a mixing board. Let’s start with 5 of the biggest dials on the board so that we can start to tune in and turn up our lead generation ROI:
Dial 1 – “Turn up” lead quantity.
Increase your program response rates across multiple lead generation channels to drive more inquiries. Get more of the right people in the right companies to respond across multiple tactics through testing.
Dial 2 – “Turn up” lead quality.
Improve your lead qualification process to increase “sales ready” lead conversion rates. Delivering leads that your sales team really wants based on your universal lead definition.
Dial 3 – “Turn up” sales team pursuit and feedback.
Create a joint service level agreement between sales and marketing to reduce time-to-sales follow-up. Ensure that “sales ready” leads are being fully engaged by sales.
Dial 4 – “Turn up” the number of certified opportunities in the pipeline.
Focus on improving your lead management and lead nurturing process. Build your marketing pipeline to increase your sales pipeline.
Dial 5 – “Turn up” closed sales.
Focus on developing pipeline acceleration programs to shorten your time-to-revenue. This requires marketing to go beyond demand generation to help sales reduce friction in order to close more sales.
The mixing board analogy seems even more appropriate as you think about continuous process improvement. As the process develops you will need to consistently make adjustments to the dials as you respond to feedback and spikes in the flow. This is not a “set it and forget it” endeavor.
I hope this gets you thinking about making beautiful music.
Related Posts:
Lead generation optimization: Finding the right amount of friction
amazing!these 5 dials are great for lead generation process. as kyla said lead generation is mainly considered as a campaign or event but as you said it should be considered as process in which proper modification should be made time to time.
Great short post on the specific dials, I think that taking the right steps on Dial 1 is a key success factor, to really get your business lead generation going you need to fill the top of your funnel.
Looks great… Can we expect some ideas for how to reduce some of the noise we are making that is unnecessary coming up soon? I love your suggestions, just think it would be appropriate to recommend losing some unnecessary actions.
That’s a helpful obvservation. I didn’t realize that I was showing that until you pointed it out. Absolutely, sales and marketing must be be aligned in order for these dials to make a revenue impact.
Its interesting to note that 3 out of your 5 dials require that marketing get more involved with sales and the sales pipeline. IMHO this is critical to the success of B2B marketers today. To make this a reality sales has to work together with marketing a allow them to participate in the process. The lines between sales and marketing are blurred.
Great Post, I’m adjusting my dials and focusing on #1 as we speak. I constantly seeking better ways to source quality leads.
Great short post on the specific dials, I think that taking the right steps on Dial 1 is a key success factor, to really get your business lead generation going you need to fill the top of your funnel.
Clever! 5 dials to tune in your lead generation process is one creative article.Why? yup, lead generation is in fact considered as campaign or a business strategy but in this article it corresponded like a rock music that is being blended and expertly tuned up to achieve the right sound and quality of every instrument use.
kyla~http:\\www.callboxinc.com