When a Lead is accepted!

Every B2B company should have some concept around what a ‘lead’, ‘contact’, ‘account’, and ‘opportunity’ are.

In meetings with Sales & Marketing, where we would discuss a Service Level Agreement “SLA”, our number one friction point was a definition of a ‘lead’. These varying assumptions are the main point of contention. In this post, I want to help define a lead and the stages or “Buyer’s Journey” could look like at your Company.

Let’s begin by examining the Buyers Journey.

The Buyer’s Journey is the purchasing process that a prospect will go through. This consists of three main stages in your Sales pipeline funnel. They become “aware” (top of funnel aka ‘TOFU’), they begin to “evaluate” (middle of funnel aka ‘MOFU’), this is where Marketing will engage your Sales Team. Then “decide” (bottom of funnel aka ‘BOFU’).

Lead Management ‘TOFU’

Lead generation and lead management cover the entire marketing process. from generating an initial lead (MCL) to nurturing leads (MEL) to qualifying leads (MQL) to setting a meeting and passing to the sales team (SAL), followed by sales qualification (SQL).

So let us begin to add the definition of a lead, that both Marketing and Sales can agree on!

In reality, an initial ‘lead’ is merely a known email address of potential contact. When received, these leads may be transferred to a Lead Generation Rep, or the Data Research Team to “enrich” the lead. This is defined as a Marketing Created Lead (MCL – Leads whose email address is known).

If this MCL later performs an action: attended an event, a webinar, or downloaded a case study for example. Then upon completion of this process, the lead should be converted to a contact (in sfdc this is known as the account/contact pair) in your CRM system, and then is defined as a Marketing Engaged Lead (MEL – Lead has responded to a Marketing Activity).

Following this, this lead can become a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), after the Lead has been “enriched” or pre-qualified by a Lead Generation Rep or Data Researcher, and assigned to an appointment setter or a business/sales development reps to contact.

Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) ‘MOFU’

So, what are the criteria to convert the lead from MQL to SAL? The next step in qualification has three parts:

1. Does the lead fit the ideal customer profile (ICP)?
2. What is the Lead score, (ranks a lead’s level of interest and sales readiness according to a pre-determined scoring methodology)?
3. The SDR contacted the Lead and has followed your qualification framework (for this post I recommend you look at CHAMP) to evaluate if they are a fit for your product or service.

Step 1: Your Ideal Customers (ICP)

• Does the MQL meet your ideal customer profile?
• Do sales and marketing agree upon your buyer persona.

In a short blog, Sam Kusinitz defines a buyer persona as; “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers”.

Step 2: Lead Score

Lead scoring ranks a lead’s level of interest and sales readiness according to a pre-determined scoring methodology. every activity the prospect does is given a score.

Step 3: The SDR

• What action did the contact take?
• Did the SDR connect and engage the Contact?
• What is their problem that needs to be solved, (have they applied CHAMP to their discussion with the Contact)?.
• Did you begin to address their most common sales objections?
• Are they willing to engage your Sales team?

If the Lead met your ICP and they are at or above your agreed upon minimum score and has agreed to meet with your Sales Rep, then this would move the Lead from an MQL to a SAL. Then after this call, would your Sales Rep creates a forecastable opportunity, then this would become an SQL.

When we align sales and marketing on this definition of what a lead is and the required thresholds, this understanding becomes pivotal as the gateway to understand when leads are truly sales-ready.