Improving Marketing Lead Quality is an ongoing process

We can all agree that there is a lack of collaboration between sales and marketing. 

Historically, these two departments didn’t need to talk. Marketing promotes. Sales engages, educates, and closes.

However, the buyer has changed. Sales and marketing, on the other hand, have not. This leads  marketing to say, “Why doesn’t sales follow up on my leads?”, and sales to say, ”Why does marketing only send me junk?”

We tackled this all too familiar topic live at the M2 forum ‘Fire Up Your Lead Quality’ on February 24, 2022.

During the forum, industry expert guest speakers Darci Evanish (Head of Revenue Marketing, Americas | Poly) and Darren Rabie (Sales Consultant and Coach) discussed the marketing lead quality challenge from both sides of the table, and shared their thoughts on what we can do to fix it.

4 Key Marketing Statistics Affecting Lead Quality

Before we dive into Darci and Darren’s insights, let’s get up to speed on some relevant stats and facts that have led to the challenge all B2B marketing professionals face when it comes to sales and marketing alignment. There’s been plenty written about the alignment challenge, but we believe it comes down to four key stats:

1 | The buyer journey has changed….in a big way.

67% (or more) of the journey is now digital. Buyers are empowered by information: it’s what helps them decide. They want to be informed and educated, not sold to ‒ and they’re engaging with sales less and less. (Forrester/Sirius Decisions, Gartner, Think with Google).

2 | An average buyer now needs 7-10 touchpoints with a brand before converting.

Sales has become less about selling and more about helping navigate purchase decisions. And marketing has shifted from straight-up promotion to end-to-end customer experience. (LinkedIn).

3 | Marketing automation generates more leads, but they’re lower quality.

80% of companies saw an increase in leads through marketing automation, but 79% of those marketing leads never convert into sales. Only 7% of salespeople said those they got from marketing were very high quality. (Invesp, Marketing Sherpa, Hubspot).

4 | There are way too many choices for marketing/sales tech out there.

It’s overwhelming ‒ the martech landscape increased by 13.6% from 2019-2020 alone, totaling 8,000 different solutions. How do you figure out which one is right?

Industry Perspectives on the Marketing Lead Quality Challenge

Now that we’ve got a few stats and facts under our belts, let’s hear from industry experts share their perspectives on the marketing lead quality and alignment challenge.  These videos give us both the sales and marketing perspectives and provided excellent context from both sides of the table in the lead up to the live forum.

Want more on marketing lead quality?

To dive deeper into the marketing lead quality challenge, and get the full picture of what was discussed during the live forum:

1. Watch the forum recording

2. Check out the full perspectives paper