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'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.