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Why should lead generation be outside the control of the sales group? Isn't marketing about a lot more than just lead generation? I always thought the best sa

by nissimk 11y ago

Why should lead generation be outside the control of the sales group? Isn't marketing about a lot more than just lead generation? I always thought the best salespeople either come with there own long list of leads, or they are good at generating new leads, or both.

yannyu 11y ago
Even when lead-gen lives inside the sales organization, the salespeople who generate leads and the salespeople who close deals are generally not the same people. It's a different skillset to hammer the phones and repeat scripts than to gauge technical fit and negotiate. The reason to have lead-gen live in marketing is because modern lead-gen is often based on marketing initiatives. For example, a good source of leads are people who attend webinars, read blog posts, or watch videos, all of which are organized and pushed out by marketing. You're correct that a marketing team does much more than just generate leads for salespeople to follow, but generally the entire goal of marketing is to generate targeted awareness in the market which raises the value of the company through mind-share or revenue. There's a lot more to say about this shift, as the job of a salesperson today is very different than the same job even 5 or 10 years ago. This has a lot to do with the relative amount of knowledge out in the wild. In the good old days, you didn't really even know what a Xerox machine was until a salesperson told you about it, let alone all the ways you could use it to help your business. Nowadays, customers are doing more and more research (through marketing materials) to guide their decision making process before ever talking to a salesperson.
- kwindla 11y ago
  What yannu said. Doesn't really matter whether marketing lives inside the sales org or not. It can work either way. (And your new VP of Sales will always tell you that marketing should report to her.) What matters is that you a) have enough and the right kind of marketing in place to fill the top of your sales funnel, and b) instrument and evaluate marketing performance at least as quantitatively and aggressively as you do sales performance.
  - shostack 11y ago
    What is interesting is the conflict of interest that can lead to. A sales leader who is responsible for both sales and marketing might have a vested interest in tossing marketing under the bus if they can't get traction or close. It also makes it hard to get projects off the ground that can have a long-term payoff since Sales tends to be very focused on the short-term tangibles, even if the former are critical to healthy growth in the big picture (think SEO, branding, laying the infrastructure for automation, etc.). Having marketing as a distinct group can help make sure there is a healthy conversation between the various priorities, and also make sure there's a voice that is empowered to say "look, we mutually agreed on these lead scoring criteria, and fact of the matter is you're not following up on all leads within 24hrs, that's not marketing's fault." I actually had that conversation once before when the sales lead also owned marketing. This was also an individual who ignored my need to have all sales conversations logged and categorized correctly in our CRM, so there were other issues.
    - derefr 11y ago
      What happens when you do it the other way around: having salespeople work for your marketing team, essentially being their "finishers"? It seems like you'd get not-necessarily-good-or-bad effects like marketing feeling empowered to offer discounts and bundles through "their" sales force.
      - shostack 11y ago
        You might get that, or you might get undo blame on the sales team if lead quality is an issue. Of course, that's why it is critical to understand what a quality lead is, and have objective criteria for it. Ultimately, I think the two disciplines, while related and needing to work together, are relatively separate. Their incentives should be aligned, and that is not always possible to implement in some sales organizations.
shostack 11y ago
I've done a lot of lead gen in my career. Mostly it was of the one-to-many kind where I'm managing scaleable marketing programs, vs. the one-to-one kind where I'm dialing for dollars. There was a very brief stint doing the latter which occurred when a sales guy was promoted to run sales and marketing and thought that would be more effective--I quickly had some data to prove him wrong. In any event, marketing is in fact about a lot more than lead gen, but lead gen is a very measurable piece, and also the one that sales reps have the most visibility into and are thus most vocal about. Some sales people will be expected to prospect, but often the person who is great at hunting (ie. prospecting) is not necessarily the best at closing. Very different skill sets. Also, you want your closer focused on closing, not worrying about filling his pipeline. Doing one-to-many lead gen at scale requires vastly different skills that many (most?) salespeople simply do not have. For example, managing an AdWords campaign, or setting up analytics.

by nissimk 11y ago

yannyu 11y ago

Even when lead-gen lives inside the sales organization, the salespeople who generate leads and the salespeople who close deals are generally not the same people. It's a different skillset to hammer the phones and repeat scripts than to gauge technical fit and negotiate. The reason to have lead-gen live in marketing is because modern lead-gen is often based on marketing initiatives. For example, a good source of leads are people who attend webinars, read blog posts, or watch videos, all of which are organized and pushed out by marketing. You're correct that a marketing team does much more than just generate leads for salespeople to follow, but generally the entire goal of marketing is to generate targeted awareness in the market which raises the value of the company through mind-share or revenue. There's a lot more to say about this shift, as the job of a salesperson today is very different than the same job even 5 or 10 years ago. This has a lot to do with the relative amount of knowledge out in the wild. In the good old days, you didn't really even know what a Xerox machine was until a salesperson told you about it, let alone all the ways you could use it to help your business. Nowadays, customers are doing more and more research (through marketing materials) to guide their decision making process before ever talking to a salesperson.

kwindla 11y ago
What yannu said. Doesn't really matter whether marketing lives inside the sales org or not. It can work either way. (And your new VP of Sales will always tell you that marketing should report to her.) What matters is that you a) have enough and the right kind of marketing in place to fill the top of your sales funnel, and b) instrument and evaluate marketing performance at least as quantitatively and aggressively as you do sales performance.
- shostack 11y ago
  What is interesting is the conflict of interest that can lead to. A sales leader who is responsible for both sales and marketing might have a vested interest in tossing marketing under the bus if they can't get traction or close. It also makes it hard to get projects off the ground that can have a long-term payoff since Sales tends to be very focused on the short-term tangibles, even if the former are critical to healthy growth in the big picture (think SEO, branding, laying the infrastructure for automation, etc.). Having marketing as a distinct group can help make sure there is a healthy conversation between the various priorities, and also make sure there's a voice that is empowered to say "look, we mutually agreed on these lead scoring criteria, and fact of the matter is you're not following up on all leads within 24hrs, that's not marketing's fault." I actually had that conversation once before when the sales lead also owned marketing. This was also an individual who ignored my need to have all sales conversations logged and categorized correctly in our CRM, so there were other issues.
  - derefr 11y ago
    What happens when you do it the other way around: having salespeople work for your marketing team, essentially being their "finishers"? It seems like you'd get not-necessarily-good-or-bad effects like marketing feeling empowered to offer discounts and bundles through "their" sales force.
    - shostack 11y ago
      You might get that, or you might get undo blame on the sales team if lead quality is an issue. Of course, that's why it is critical to understand what a quality lead is, and have objective criteria for it. Ultimately, I think the two disciplines, while related and needing to work together, are relatively separate. Their incentives should be aligned, and that is not always possible to implement in some sales organizations.

shostack 11y ago

I've done a lot of lead gen in my career. Mostly it was of the one-to-many kind where I'm managing scaleable marketing programs, vs. the one-to-one kind where I'm dialing for dollars. There was a very brief stint doing the latter which occurred when a sales guy was promoted to run sales and marketing and thought that would be more effective--I quickly had some data to prove him wrong. In any event, marketing is in fact about a lot more than lead gen, but lead gen is a very measurable piece, and also the one that sales reps have the most visibility into and are thus most vocal about. Some sales people will be expected to prospect, but often the person who is great at hunting (ie. prospecting) is not necessarily the best at closing. Very different skill sets. Also, you want your closer focused on closing, not worrying about filling his pipeline. Doing one-to-many lead gen at scale requires vastly different skills that many (most?) salespeople simply do not have. For example, managing an AdWords campaign, or setting up analytics.