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Leading a Lead Generation Audit
June 09, 2008
Wondering why your latest training endeavor failed to set sales zooming? In addition to top-notch learning and development, a lead generation audit might be what you need.
By Jackie Walts
In these days of tight marketing budgets, companies are relying on lead generation to fill pipelines and increase sales. Whether executions are postal mail, e-mail, paid lead programs, advertising, or trade shows, lead generation programs that bring in a high volume of high quality leads at the right cost are a top priority. However, most companies are not getting the results they need. Based on my 25 years of experience, it’s usually because there is a significant disconnect between the objective and the programs in place. Unless programs are finely tuned by an experienced lead generation team, many end up being expensive experiments with results far below expectations.
How do you avoid this trap? An audit of the current systems can give a road map on how to improve results. While I conduct many audits as an outside consultant, it's not difficult for companies to self-assess. The following is a step-by-step process of how to proceed:
Step 1: Plan the Audit
I recommend choosing a senior executive to take on the job. Your auditor should meet with field and inside sales people of all levels, marketing staff from vice president down to program manager level, and anyone who works in the channel. I conduct interviews from a written list of questions designed for open-ended responses and usually spend about a half hour with 10 to 30 people. I always conduct interviews in person or on the phone. The most interesting information is found in the dialog back and forth, and e-mail doesn't lend itself to open communication that way.
Step 2: Define Your Perfect Customer
Define your perfect customer. If you haven't done this, your company has no business conducting lead generation at all. Find any detailed information about a perfect customer, but focus on information that is easily quantifiable in marketing—title, size of company, industry, location, and equipment or systems they use. Once you define your perfect customer, this definition will serve as the brief for media buys and creative development, a rating card for trade shows, your landing page questionnaire, and your report card for program success. It's also important to calculate the cost your company can reasonably spend to acquire a customer. Don't worry about perfect number, but a round figure for annual revenue from a single customer, and maybe even a lifetime value, will give you a metric to determine what you can spend to generate leads.
Step 3: Program Review
Review current creative and executions your company is using for lead generation. If you have a marketing or lead generation plan, start with that. Also read everything communicated to the public by your company including your Website, e-mails, postal mail, press releases, tradeshow booths and handouts, collateral, and calling scripts—even those used by individual sales people. Is it the right tone and execution to your target audience defined above? Put yourself in the shoes of your perfect customer—is this what you'd want to see? Is the offer meaningful to you? Would you open or read it? Would you respond?
Step 4: Review Sources and Results
Review every source for lead generation to determine how well it brings in perfect customers. Review responses from marketing, trade shows, off the Web, search, and cold calls from your sales team. Are these the right respondents? If not, what is missing to get more of the prospects you need? This also is the time to review responses on a cost-per-sale basis. Are you spending a reasonable amount of money to acquire these leads? Which programs bring in the most return? What can you eliminate? Note: If you don't have this information, even through a manual tally, stop doing lead generation until you do—lead generation without tracking always means ineffective programs. Implement tracking before you continue any efforts so you have the tools to rate and prioritize your programs.
Step 5: Review the Lead Response Path
Your company may be getting qualified leads at an appropriate cost, but do you have a well defined follow up process? I'm amazed at how often companies spend a fortune on lead generation and then load responses into their database without any plan of what to do with them. Does your company call leads? E-mail them? Use a multi-tiered approach? How are leads distributed? Does the sales team actually get the leads? Do they act on them in a timely manner? Who is responsible for making sure the follow up process works? Respond to something—what happens? For an even more in-depth view, sit with telesales or a sales person as they follow up leads. You learn a lot that way.
Step 6: Review the Lead Funnel
Review the path once contact is attempted. Today most outreach does not mean a live conversation, and just because your sales rep didn't connect doesn't mean the response is not valuable. What is the path for a lead when there is no phone contact? How many attempts are made? What is the path if a rep connects, but the prospect is not ready to buy? Setting a secondary lead path is vital to a good program. Your path should first identify buyers, second, eliminate unqualified responses from future follow up, and third, put together a plan of what to do with the larger third category—those who have expressed an interest and no connection is made.
Step 7: Check Sales and Marketing Communication
Check out how well your sales and marketing teams work together on lead generation. Good lead generation marketers love sales people because they are a terrific source of information and feedback. But many marketers never talk to sales—they not only develop campaigns in a vacuum, they don't brief the team who receive the leads and answer the phones. And vice versa, good sales people are invested in sharing information with marketing. I've never met a sales person who doesn't want more good qualified leads, but I've met quite a few who never communicate back to marketing with ideas on what would make programs more efficient. Warning sign: If you don't see a regularly scheduled meeting between your marketing and sales teams to discuss current programs, you may have an issue.
Step 8: Analyze Results.
I've never conducted an audit that didn't provide a clear picture of areas to refine. Sometimes fixes are easy. Sometimes the entire program needs an overhaul. The final step in an audit is to present findings to sales, marketing, and senior management, and go over recommendations on how to refine the programs in the future. The real benefit is the excitement and ideas that come out of bringing the issues into the open to discuss and prioritize next steps.
Jackie Walts is a 25-year direct marketing and lead generation professional. She specializes in helping companies kick off or refine lead generation programs, and has worked with both consumer and business-to-business clients such as Wells Fargo, VeriSign, BEA Systems, and Viansa Winery. To learn more, visit www.jackiewalts.com.
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