Time for a B2B Marketing Moratorium on “More Leads”

The widget company’s revenue grinds to a halt. New business dies on the vine. Widespread panic begins to set in. The CEO screams, “We need more leads!” The fire is lit. Salespeople scurry in every direction as a category five sh*tstorm of leads is rammed into a bloating pipeline that quakes and collapses, crushing the sales department…(ok cut!)

If you’ve seen this disaster film, you know it gets worse. The unqualified leads pipeline makes forecasting unreliable. Teams waste time and money chasing dead ends. Long B2B sales cycles grow longer. Close rates sink lower. Confidence plummets. Where’s Charleston Heston when you need him?

Let’s hit rewind and find out how we ever got into this “more leads” mess.

Why “More Leads” Happens

It’s not exactly a best practice, but many companies default to “more leads” because it feels actionable. It keeps people busy. Besides, lead quantity is a lot easier to request and measure than lead quality. Yep, vanity metrics are a real thing.

A deeper diagnosis reveals that lead volume can be a crutch and even a cover-up. More leads can compensate for inefficiencies within the sales system. It can mask weak targeting, sales and marketing misalignment, and unrealistic product positioning.

A Leaky Lead Pipeline

Continuously needing more leads can be a sign that the system converting those leads needs repair. Low closing rates can be traced to a variety of shortcomings. The sales funnel may be designed to drive activity rather than results. The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) may be too general. The marketing message may be attracting the wrong prospects.

Let’s look at some underlying B2B sales system issues and how a better lead generation strategy can improve matters.

Questionable Quality

Systems that emphasize lead volume often fail because the wrong people are attracted, qualified, or passed on to sales. Proper lead qualification helps to prioritize prospects effectively and use sales personnel efficiently. What that widget company needs is a lead scoring system that clearly defines what a quality lead looks like and which ones really belong in the pipeline.

Poor Timing

B2B buyers take time to educate themselves before they are ready to buy. Along the way, they may click on ads or fill out forms, but don’t assume this kind of activity indicates their buying intent. Pushing sales too early in the customer journey can make prospects feel rushed, or worse, hunted.

Finding in-market buyers requires the use of behavioral data rather than just capturing top-of-funnel clicks. CRM systems and customized lead scoring tools, populated with your historical sales data, give you visibility into your best leads — and even better — help you manage leads efficiently along a timeline that aligns with the customer’s journey.

Boiling The Ocean

Often, the best way to improve lead quality is to pick your swim lane, i.e., narrow your target. Zero in on specific industries, a particular business size or maturity level, or a defined geography that promises the greatest ROI. Then map out the ideal marketing and sales journey for that type of lead. Sure, this means fewer leads, but they’ll be more profitable and take less effort to close.

Sales and Marketing Silos

Disconnects between marketing and sales cause leads to vanish. Blame it on poor handovers or unclear follow-up. Our widget company needs to pay more attention to acceptance rates, which indicate whether sales accept and advance leads generated by marketing. Low acceptance rates are a sign of poor targeting or premature handoffs.

Two separate qualification models, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), can add to the problem. A shared scoring and qualification model that measures lead progression rather than volume helps sales to prioritize leads most likely to convert.

Awkward Positioning

When product positioning doesn't clearly differentiate you, you’re just inviting masses of unqualified, undecided prospects into your funnel, inflating your customer acquisition costs.

To attract a tightly defined group of prospects, you need a tightly defined value proposition.

Messaging must be based on the actual buying journey — meaning pump the brakes on overly aspirational language. Businesses that understand their target audience's customer journey — from awareness to consideration to the decision phase — can strategically deliver the appropriate messaging that enables timely conversations and ushers prospects through each step of the sales process.

Lack of Lead Management

When lead volume rises but conversion rates fall, that’s a sure sign you have a lead-flow problem that is failing to move buyers from early interest to genuine commitment. The culprits here range from fragmented lead and account data to the limitations of single-channel nurturing programs to weak feedback loops that fail to reveal what is working and what is not.

Effective lead management should be viewed as a series of buyer experience checkpoints. It begins by collecting buyer activities into a shared system. Buyer fit and readiness are then evaluated to ensure the right prospects don’t feel pushed. Nurturing comes next, helping buyers gain confidence through personalized communications. When the time is right, sales-ready leads or accounts are handed off to the closers. Lastly, attribution and reporting post-sales are critical to improving the system.

B2B Lead Pipeline Checklist

To be fair, “more leads” is not always a bad idea. It becomes a problem when volume is pushed into broken qualification and conversion systems. For those looking to troubleshoot their leads system, here’s a short list of to-dos.

Note where your process and prospects tend to stall in the funnel. This will help you zero in on your problem areas. Then, bring marketing and sales together to map out your customer journey and measure the conversion rates of each stage.
Come to a shared and more precise agreement on what a “quality lead” is. Define your ideal customer as opposed to your overall target market. Refer to your historic sales data to uncover the customer types that have the best lead conversion rates and profit margins.
Strengthen your positioning by clearly and accurately communicating value. This will help convert prospects faster.
Fix the fumbled handoff between marketing and sales. The gap where the ball often gets dropped should become the connection where the right person steps in with a reason, not a sales pitch.
Focus measurements on lead progression rather than volume. Gauge success by the quality of your sales interactions. A feedback loop is essential here.

Need a qualified lead on a B2B marketing partner?

Lead generation, lead management and lead conversion are hot topics across the B2B sales and marketing world as buyer journeys and sales funnel systems evolve. For strategic guidance on how to optimize your processes, positioning and profitability, Adcom is here to help. Contact us to get started.