Uncover The Gold: A Business Case Study For Best Practices In Lead Management
Executive Summary
In the beginning, someone raises a hand and says Yestell me more. From that moment on, a company becomes engaged in one of the most critical functions that impacts sales success: lead management.
It's an intricate, complex process spanning both marketing and sales professionals. In order to make sure leads are properly targeted, distributed, tracked and acted upon, companies need a unified system that makes the entire process more visible and collaborative. From initial marketing campaign planning right through lead qualification, this paper explores how one Pivotal customerthe LCD Products Group of Sharp Electronicshas invested in marketing automation technology to ensure that their marketing and sales teams more efficiently recognize and act swiftly on the most profitable opportunities.
Change is sweeping through marketing organizations everywhere. Expectations are risinggive us more, better quality leads, more quicklywhile budgets and headcounts shrink. The mandate of doing more with less has never been more apparent, and pressure is increasing for marketing teams to draw a direct line drawn between their activities and the bottom line. The good news for marketing professionals is that lead management technology, one of the key tools that demonstrates marketing value in the charts and statistics that executives demand, is now widely available. It's no longer merely the "Fortunate 500" who can afford to buy and implement this powerful capability, and have marketing teams that are intensely, quantitatively accountable. As lead management strategiesand the processes and technologies that bring them to lifecome within the reach of mid-sized and smaller businesses, the value proposition and timeliness of these tools are becoming irresistible to those who need to prove their worth.
Over the next few pages you will learn how lead management best practices and technology have transformed how a division of Sharp Electronics generates, distributes and manages leads for better sales success. We'll also examine why more companies are joining the trend, raising the lead management bar to sharpen how they identify and win new opportunities.
Marketing Today
Traditionally, marketers have been 'ideas' people, experimenting with creative ways to generate leads and create awareness. For some time, it was accepted that the benefit of marketing would be soft and qualitative in naturewe know half of our marketing activities are usefulwe just don't know which half. We know marketing is necessary, we just don't know how good we are at it. Until today, ROI-based reporting had long been an inexact science. But as our collective understanding and visibility improves, what we see alarms us. Leading market research firms have recently released studies suggesting that the vast majority of all sales leadsup to 70%are never acted upon because they don't reach the right person at the right time.
This is a sobering reality for marketers everywhere.
Operational Account Ability Has Arrived
The ultimate goal of any marketing department is to generate qualified leads for sales, who then converts them into customers. The rate at which deals close is the final yard stick by which every marketing investment should be measuredbut it's not easy. In the past, the ability to track the cause and effect of marketing campaigns has been very elusive, resulting in no ability to clearly determine true ROI for marketing initiatives.
And the pressure is on. In a recent report, Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group revealed that marketing departments are just now being held to demonstrate the same level of quantitative value as other departments. "The era of operational accountability has arrived," states the report. "Coupled with the maturation and growing effectiveness of marketing technologies, [a] focus on quantifiable performance promises to accelerate a measurable shift of an organization's marketing spend away from traditional media-based advertising processes and towards technology-centric, interactive marketing services.
Marketers are now judged by the same criteria as other line-of-business managers and executives. They are held accountable for their spending, their headcounts and their contribution. "The time has come to automate a broader collection of enterprise wide marketing processes," suggests the report. "Fortunately, the necessary supporting technology is now available to enable marketers to streamline traditionally manual processes and to better target communications to appropriate audiences."
Enter Lead Management
It is not just the idea of lead quantity that has come under scrutiny. It's lead quality.
Rather than asking how many leads were generated, executives are asking for conversion rates, or what proportion of leads resulted in closed opportunities. Answering this question means analyzing the entire lead lifecyclefrom how the lead was generated to how the lead was distributed to sales and what happened once it got there. Teams are accountable to show investment return and solid performance at every step, and over time, to show quantifiable improvement. As executives ask tough questions, lead management technology gives marketers the visibility and the answers they need to consistently show they're on the right track.
Lead management is the process of rapidly and effectively creating, nurturing, distributing and analyzing leads. The ultimate goal? To increase the likelihood that a lead will convert to a qualified opportunity and then a new, satisfied customer. To implement a lead management strategy, marketing and sales must work closely together.
For best results, a lead management system must converge the right people, processes and information at various stages:
Identifying hot leads and automatically route to direct sales or channel partners
Actively engaging the remaining leads and nurture them through the pipeline to eventual sale
Tracking leads to closure and evaluate the ROI of marketing campaigns
Integrating the external channel including value added resellers (VARs), other resellers and strategic partners
Integrating offline qualification resources such as call centers
Let's examine the marketing process of one Pivotal customerSharp Electronics' LCD Products Group. We'll look at how the above lead management milestones were met both before and after they implemented marketing automation technology, and see how this new tool transformed their marketing model for more successful, more visible results.
Sharp Electronics' LCD Products Group, based in New Jersey, began using marketing automation in June 2002. According to Fred Krazeise, Director of Strategic Marketing at Sharp's LCD Products Group, his company began to look at its lead management planning, execution, distribution, nurturing and several years ago. It was part of a marketing approach focused on helping Sharp VARs and channel partners "win and keep customers for life."
In the beginning, someone raises a hand and says Yestell me more. From that moment on, a company becomes engaged in one of the most critical functions that impacts sales success: lead management.
It's an intricate, complex process spanning both marketing and sales professionals. In order to make sure leads are properly targeted, distributed, tracked and acted upon, companies need a unified system that makes the entire process more visible and collaborative. From initial marketing campaign planning right through lead qualification, this paper explores how one Pivotal customerthe LCD Products Group of Sharp Electronicshas invested in marketing automation technology to ensure that their marketing and sales teams more efficiently recognize and act swiftly on the most profitable opportunities.
Change is sweeping through marketing organizations everywhere. Expectations are risinggive us more, better quality leads, more quicklywhile budgets and headcounts shrink. The mandate of doing more with less has never been more apparent, and pressure is increasing for marketing teams to draw a direct line drawn between their activities and the bottom line. The good news for marketing professionals is that lead management technology, one of the key tools that demonstrates marketing value in the charts and statistics that executives demand, is now widely available. It's no longer merely the "Fortunate 500" who can afford to buy and implement this powerful capability, and have marketing teams that are intensely, quantitatively accountable. As lead management strategiesand the processes and technologies that bring them to lifecome within the reach of mid-sized and smaller businesses, the value proposition and timeliness of these tools are becoming irresistible to those who need to prove their worth.
Over the next few pages you will learn how lead management best practices and technology have transformed how a division of Sharp Electronics generates, distributes and manages leads for better sales success. We'll also examine why more companies are joining the trend, raising the lead management bar to sharpen how they identify and win new opportunities.
Marketing Today
Traditionally, marketers have been 'ideas' people, experimenting with creative ways to generate leads and create awareness. For some time, it was accepted that the benefit of marketing would be soft and qualitative in naturewe know half of our marketing activities are usefulwe just don't know which half. We know marketing is necessary, we just don't know how good we are at it. Until today, ROI-based reporting had long been an inexact science. But as our collective understanding and visibility improves, what we see alarms us. Leading market research firms have recently released studies suggesting that the vast majority of all sales leadsup to 70%are never acted upon because they don't reach the right person at the right time.
This is a sobering reality for marketers everywhere.
Operational Account Ability Has Arrived
The ultimate goal of any marketing department is to generate qualified leads for sales, who then converts them into customers. The rate at which deals close is the final yard stick by which every marketing investment should be measuredbut it's not easy. In the past, the ability to track the cause and effect of marketing campaigns has been very elusive, resulting in no ability to clearly determine true ROI for marketing initiatives.
And the pressure is on. In a recent report, Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group revealed that marketing departments are just now being held to demonstrate the same level of quantitative value as other departments. "The era of operational accountability has arrived," states the report. "Coupled with the maturation and growing effectiveness of marketing technologies, [a] focus on quantifiable performance promises to accelerate a measurable shift of an organization's marketing spend away from traditional media-based advertising processes and towards technology-centric, interactive marketing services.
Marketers are now judged by the same criteria as other line-of-business managers and executives. They are held accountable for their spending, their headcounts and their contribution. "The time has come to automate a broader collection of enterprise wide marketing processes," suggests the report. "Fortunately, the necessary supporting technology is now available to enable marketers to streamline traditionally manual processes and to better target communications to appropriate audiences."
Enter Lead Management
It is not just the idea of lead quantity that has come under scrutiny. It's lead quality.
Rather than asking how many leads were generated, executives are asking for conversion rates, or what proportion of leads resulted in closed opportunities. Answering this question means analyzing the entire lead lifecyclefrom how the lead was generated to how the lead was distributed to sales and what happened once it got there. Teams are accountable to show investment return and solid performance at every step, and over time, to show quantifiable improvement. As executives ask tough questions, lead management technology gives marketers the visibility and the answers they need to consistently show they're on the right track.
Lead management is the process of rapidly and effectively creating, nurturing, distributing and analyzing leads. The ultimate goal? To increase the likelihood that a lead will convert to a qualified opportunity and then a new, satisfied customer. To implement a lead management strategy, marketing and sales must work closely together.
For best results, a lead management system must converge the right people, processes and information at various stages:
Identifying hot leads and automatically route to direct sales or channel partners
Actively engaging the remaining leads and nurture them through the pipeline to eventual sale
Tracking leads to closure and evaluate the ROI of marketing campaigns
Integrating the external channel including value added resellers (VARs), other resellers and strategic partners
Integrating offline qualification resources such as call centers
Let's examine the marketing process of one Pivotal customerSharp Electronics' LCD Products Group. We'll look at how the above lead management milestones were met both before and after they implemented marketing automation technology, and see how this new tool transformed their marketing model for more successful, more visible results.
Sharp Electronics' LCD Products Group, based in New Jersey, began using marketing automation in June 2002. According to Fred Krazeise, Director of Strategic Marketing at Sharp's LCD Products Group, his company began to look at its lead management planning, execution, distribution, nurturing and several years ago. It was part of a marketing approach focused on helping Sharp VARs and channel partners "win and keep customers for life."
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