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July 19, 2006
Your Lead Generation Machine—Well Oiled or Ready for Overhaul?
by Sridhar Ramanathan
Virtually every organization has a process for moving prospective customers from the very first contact (e.g. advertising) to contract phase (e.g. purchase order). This contact-to-contract process usually requires excellent teamwork between the marketing, inside-sales, and sales teams. The sub-process that gets a lot of attention these days is lead generation or demand generation as it’s called more broadly. How do you know if your organization has a well-oiled machine for lead generation or is in bad need for a major over haul? Here’s a simple checklist to give you a sense for how much room for improvement there is relative to companies that have mastered this process or system. Technically, we should assign weights for each of these but, for a first pass, just answer yes or no.
| Performance Criteria | Yes/No |
| Goals are explicit and visible | |
| Executive sponsors engaged | |
| Granular and agreed upon definition of “lead” | |
| Defined roles/responsibilities in sales/marketing functions | Personnel are trained and effective in their role |
| Personnel are highly motivated | |
| Clear hand-offs occur between these roles | |
| Quarterly budget in place (vs ad hoc) | |
| Corrective actions taken based on metrics (i.e. closed loop) | |
| Database(s) established for marketing and sales efforts |
Optimize -- If you answered “yes” to 7 or more then congratulations are in order. You might consider optimizing the specific areas where you answered “no” so that you can improve the overall performance on your lead gen engine.
Organize -- If you answered “yes” to fewer than 7, you have lots of room for improvement. The good news is that addressing each area of weakness will have a significant impact on overall results. Give us a call please or seek some outside counsel to ramp up the areas of weakness.
© 2006 Sridhar Ramanathan Pacifica Group
Posted July 19, 2006 | Permalink
Posted to Marketing Management