How do you know the leads marketing is sending to sales are actually getting to a sales rep? Checking for a successful hand off between sales and marketing is a critical, but often very much overlooked step in the B2B sales process. Without checking for the hand off, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) could end up orphaned without rep assignment or access.
It is therefore key to understand:
- Actual number of MQLs created by marketing per the marketing automation system
- Number of MQLs that are in the reps work queue by rep as reported by the sales automation system
- What a rep sees when they look for open MQLs in their queue
First, it is important to look at the count of MQLs that the marketing automation system is reporting. There is another blog post to be written on how to check the MQLs coming out of marketing are correct based on the inputs, but that is for another day. Today, it is important just to count the number of MQLs reported by the marketing automation system since it is this total that needs to show up in all the sales reps lead queues.
For step two, given the total number of MQLs reported by the marketing automation system, how many are actually showing up in the work queues of individual sales reps? Are these the right sales reps based on lead routing rules?
Finally, can you walk out onto the sales floor and ask a rep to show you where his new MQLs are sitting in the system? If this number matches what is in the CRM system, you have successfully transferred a web site click all the way into a sales reps work queue. Congratulations! If not, it is time to go back and start diagnosing where the transfer problem lies.
Either way, weekly accounting for lead transfers is a critical part of the B2B process.