Starved for Leads = Fueling a Revenue Crisis

Your lead quality and count should not be lower than it was at this time last year. A sales team is starved for leads or suffering lead quality issues will become restless, frustrated, and high-performers will leave. Rainmakers leaving your company for greener pastures further fuel the risk of revenue crisis.

A sales organization starved for leads will result in a revenue shortfall.

Can you afford to wait for marketing to get their act together?

Finding qualified leads today is much different than tactics employed prior to Covid-19. Your marketing plan would have had to go through a major metamorphosis to look significantly different today, than it looked in 2019. If your marketing plan (strategy, spend allocation, and tactics) has not morphed substantially, your sales team is likely frustrated and starved for leads.

If your marketing plan has gone through a major evolution since 2019 and your sales team is still suffering a lead shortfall, the changes made were not the right ones. It is time to go back to the drawing board!

Does a lead crisis mean you have to throw more money at marketing?

The short answer is, 'not necessarily'. Examining where your resources are currently committed, then allocating funds towards new initiatives where pockets of your best prospects are, is a sound first step. Additionally, if you are not being strategically savvy in the area of digital marketing, you are missing out.

This quick change sounds easy if you say it fast, but is a far more complex problem to solve. Getting it solved quickly may save your high-performers from jumping ship, and most importantly, ensure you have a shot at hitting your revenue target for the year.

When enough (leads) is enough

There should be technology-aided systems and automated processes feeding you valid data as indicators of lead quality. Ideally, lead data is captured and recorded automagically (not manually), to reveal where your best (most lucrative and accelerated conversions) deals are coming from. Anything short of valid/accurate real-time data around this matter, will hinder marketing’s ability to justify means being used to find more leads for what may be a leads-starved sales organization.

While the finger-pointing between sales and marketing may never completely go away, it can be reduced when the sales organization agrees, 'marketing is doing their job well'. If marketing believes they are doing all of this, and your sales organization is still starved for leads, marketing is not doing what needs to be done.

To begin to circumvent this revenue crisis in the making, your marketing team should have a handle on the following elements:

• Lead sources and Buyers Journey for all Wins in the last 12-18 months.

• Where to find the most concentrated pockets of prospects that match the persona(s) of recent Wins.

• Advanced digital marketing strategies to meet the concentrated pockets of prospects where they are looking.

• A better lead magnet than your competitors.

• Marketing automation software.

• Digital strategies and tactics to accelerate conversion.