Your inbox is full.
Your marketing report just landed and great news: leads are up and form fills are up!
Then you ask sales about those leads, and the answer is a big ol’ shrug.
Both things are telling you the truth. Marketing is reporting the number it controls. Sales is describing the conversations it is actually having. Nobody is lying, and you still cannot tell whether your marketing money is working.
TACT Marketing Strategy
Forrester analysis found that only 10% of B2B sales and marketing leaders say their sales reps have “plenty of high-quality leads.” And unfortunately, that gap rarely shows up in a lead report.
Why Volume Hides Quality
Volume is the easiest number to count and the easiest one to grow. A form fill is a form fill, whether the person is ready to talk or was never going to buy.
Marketing owns the top of the funnel, so the marketing reports are showing the numbers. Sales, on the other hand, owns what happens next, and that rarely makes it into the report since a lot of that can be relational and not hard-and-fast numbers.
This is where a follow-up process is essential, and it should be included in marketing's reporting so that it gets its proper ‘day in the sun.’ A lead with a fast response becomes a conversation. But that same lead, left waiting, looks like a poor lead by the time anyone reviews it. The report still counts it as a win, and sales counts it as a miss.
What We Saw With a Client
We worked with a client where marketing and sales disagreed about lead quality. Marketing touted strong lead volume; sales described the leads as poor. (This is why we fight the whole “impressions are looking great!” argument.)
Impressions and interest weren’t the whole problem; follow-up was slow and inconsistent, and the report had no way to show it. Marketing was measured on form fills, so the report stopped at the form.
We added a monthly feedback loop between the two teams, so both could see what happened to each lead after it came in. We also overhauled their reporting process and documentation to ensure the full picture was included, so we knew where to step in, where to get creative, and when to just let something die.
The Bottom Line
Lead volume tells you how much came in, but it does not tell you what you got.
Ask for one report that shows what sales did with each lead and what happened next. A TACT Marketing Audit shows where leads go quiet between the form and the first conversation, and what to fix first. Book a free discovery call with us here to get started and learn more about what our process entails.
