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  • Blog
    • 2018
      • 01
        • The hidden cost of selling direct – the returns game
        • 2018 Lead Generation & Recruitment Predictions & Tips
        • How's your marketing?
        • Questions That You Need To Answer
        • Do You Know What Your Competition Is Doing?
        • The Offer - How To Make One They Can't Refuse
        • Successful Product Development
        • How Direct Makes Digital Better
      • 02
        • Managing The Sales Pipeline
        • The Marketing Planning Process...Doing It Right!
      • 03
        • Being Prepared for Change (Why You Need Market Intelligence to Drive Revenue Growth)
        • Competitor Update: Coursera Coming to Eat Your Lunch
        • Discussion: Why Should Your Institution Exist in the 21st Century?
        • Discussion: Should Your College Exist in the 21st Century?
        • Welcome Back: Former Students, Graduates
        • Adult Students: Thoughts on the Chronicle's Report
      • 04
        • Avalanche of Dreck...Are you part of the problem?
        • Profile of the Average Online Student
    • 2017
      • 01
        • Influencer Marketing: More Confusion Over Simple Concept
        • 10+ Reasons Why Most College Marketing/Enrollment Plans Fail & How to Avoid Them
        • Marketing Planning 101 - Are You?
        • Are CMOs' Jobs in Jeopardy?
        • Lead Flow Planning - Getting It Right
        • Omni Channel or Not? Retail Survival or Not?
      • 02
        • Announcing Our New Enhanced On-Demand Services for Adult, Graduate and Continuing Education Programs
        • Tips for Great Direct Response Radio
        • Email Design Tips
        • Data-Driven Marketing...It's As Old As Index Cards, And Then Some...
        • Why They ain’t buying what you’re sellin’
      • 03
        • New Degree Programs: What You Must Learn from Google, Amazon and Apple
        • Student Recruitment & Retention Goes to the Movies
        • Just Outsource It!
      • 04
        • Why You’re Not Answering Their Questions
        • Adult Students: Are You Serious or Just Screwing Around?
        • Is Your Brand Safe?
        • Ask Questions
        • Event Marketing for Adult Enrollments
        • Retail is Not Dead!
        • Pros & Cons of In House Agency
        • Is Affiliate Marketing for Your Business?
        • Webinar: 7 Proven Techniques for Increasing Adult Student Enrollments
        • False Victories
      • 05
        • Bring Programmatic Adv In House? Yes? No?
        • Call Attribution Tech - Do you need it?
        • Are you losing sales people?
        • Webinar: Adult Student Retention
        • Is ‘eMail Blindness’ Killing Your Business?
      • 06
        • Direct Mail Tips for More Effective Student Recruitment
        • Marketers Wake Up...Get Those Phone #s
        • The Secret to Successfully Providing Life-long Learning
        • Higher Ed Marketing Podcast 3: Web Forms
        • Higher Ed Marketing Podcast 4: Thank you page
      • 07
        • 2 Secrets to Achieving Adult Enrollment Goals
        • Social Worship
        • The Amazon Effect...Are You Ready?
        • Old Ways Don't Open New Doors
      • 08
        • Early Results: Adult Student Recruitment Effectiveness Part I of II
        • Early Results: Adult Student Recruitment Effectiveness Part II of II
        • Webinar: Competitive Intelligence 101
        • How to Say the Right Thing so More Adults Enroll
        • Clear Communications, not Content Marketing, is Key to Achieving Adult Enrollment Goals
      • 09
        • Are You Listening Carefully? Asking the Right Questions?
        • Missing Unrealistic Goals
      • 10
        • What Are You Putting Into Your Sales Pipeline
        • Competitive Intelligence - What is it? Why do you need it?
      • 11
        • Yes, You Do Have the Budget
      • 12
        • Enrollment Opportunity: Under-served Segments
        • Why Colleges Are Failing to Achieve Adult Enrollment Goals
    • 2016
      • 01
        • Direct Marketing Planning
        • How Many Leads Do Our Sales Executives Need?
        • The Drones Are Coming!
        • New Study Identifies Opportunities to Improve Student Recruitment
        • Outbound Telemarketing Missing Opportunities As Part of College Student Recruitment
        • Student Retention Tips for 2016
        • Advantages of Direct Marketing
        • 6 Tips to Improve Your College's Content Marketing Performance
      • 02
        • Lead Flow Planning - Getting It Right
        • Are You Sitting Around Waiting for Business?
        • Get More Our of Your CRM Investment
        • Tips for Building Affordable, Effective Marketing Research Program
        • Smart College Recruitment Targets Wisely Using Segmentation
      • 03
        • Marketer's Toolkit Goes Mobile
        • A/B Testing: Some Important Rules to Follow
        • Targeting is Not Rocket Science
        • Snap Chat for Student Recruitment
        • Colleges Must Lead the Way in Marketing to Millennials
        • How Many Leads Do You Need?
        • Do You Know What a "Lead" Is?
        • Do You Know How Many Sales Leads You Need? Find Out With...
        • Content Marketing: It's a Mess
      • 04
        • What Is The Best Marketing Channel?
        • Do You Need a Marketing Plan?
        • Data Analytics Improve Enrollment Performance
        • Why Facilitated Strategic Planning Workshops are Most Effective for Your College...
        • Common Social Media Challenges and Solutions
        • 8 1/2 Common Errors in the Student Recruitment Process
      • 05
        • Differentiation - Colleges Need to Be Uniquely Valuable
        • Non-Traditional Students: Tips to Attract & Retain
        • Market Planning Process
        • Market Analysis - Identify Your Target Markets
        • Catalog Business Plan
        • 10 Common Digital Marketing Mistakes & Solutions
        • Tips for Recruiting Millennials to Your College
        • How to Lower New Student Acquisition Costs
      • 06
        • Your Website Needs Help
        • Better Adwords Performance ASAP
        • Higher Education Marketing Assessment Tool: A Demo
        • Join Marketing Connection Today
        • Marketers Are Focused On the Wrong Things
        • Marketing...It's About the Numbers
        • Top Benefits You Enjoy From a Mystery Shopper Audit
        • Colleges Without Market Research: Penny-Wise, Pound Foolish
      • 07
        • The Future of Content Marketing
        • Pokemon Go: Student Recruitment & Retention?
        • Whatever the Channel: Marketing Success Depends on 5 Factors
        • When Your Customers Aren't Your Customers - Social Media Pitfalls
        • Content Marketing Success
        • Why You Can't Afford to Pass on a Retention Audit
      • 08
        • Your Trouble With Adwords
        • You Can't Recruit & Retain if You Don't Know Your Audience
        • Facebook Live for Student Recruitment
        • How to Make Significant Improvements to Student Recruitment Results
      • 09
        • Why Facilitated Strategic Planning Workshops are Most Effective for Your College...
        • Video Marketing: Tips for Greater Success
        • The Details Are in the Plans
        • Digital Metrics: How Much is Real & How Much is Bullshit?
        • Video Content Marketing: Tips for Greater Success
      • 10
        • How You Can Enroll More Non-Traditional Students
        • Your Email Metrics Are Wrong
        • Too Much Content Too Much Waste
        • How Asking the Right Questions Can Increase Enrollments
        • Content Marketing for Higher Education Recruitment and Retention
      • 11
        • 5 Ways to Increase Graduate School Enrollments by Leveraging Data
        • Big Data, Predictive Analytics & Marketing Research Strike Out in Election 2016
      • 12
    • 2015
      • 11
        • Black Friday - Cyber Monday - Trends

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Do You Know What a "Lead" Is?

Mar 28, 2016

This is an important question, especially if you are in marketing and have the responsibility for generating leads for your sales organization.  Based on recent research, it’s surprising how many marketers don’t have a clue what a “lead” is for their business.   When no one in marketing or the rest of the organization knows what constitutes a “lead” or everyone has a different definition, you are already in trouble. Based on my experience, the situation isn’t improving. In fact, this situation is closer to being the norm rather than the exception.

There have been thousands of seminars, white papers and books given and written on the subject of lead generation and lead qualification and you would think that this problem should be behind us rather than one facing businesses on a daily basis.

Even with millions being spent on marketing technology, the situation hasn’t improved significantly.  In fact, it may be getting worse, because rather than using technology as a tool to help manage the lead generation and management process, people are letting the technology do their thinking for them.  Scary, since technology can’t think.

From a recent Direct Marketing News article…”Marketing Still Not Producing Enough Leads” — “…Despite the efforts of technologists to get marketing and sales departments on the same page, a lot of the traditional disconnects endure. “Marketing historically has not delivered enough leads to sales, and that’s still the situation today,” he says. “Companies say that 28 to 35 percent of leads come from marketing, while 45 to 52 percent come from sales. Marketing may have the tools, but sales is still carrying the heavy load.”  So, sales doesn’t think much of the leads being passed to it by marketing.

The failure of most lead generation and lead management programs can be pinned on the most fundamental and critical component of the process and that is in defining what’s a “lead” and then getting general acceptance of that definition within the organization and I’m talking the entire organization, not just marketing and sales.

No wonder lead generation programs fail to produce “leads” when everyone from the CEO down to the sales person doing the qualification has a different definition of “lead.”

I have given the speech hundreds of times on the importance of defining what a “lead” is and then getting everyone in the organization to agree on that definition.  And, yet I’m always running into situations where the management team has their own definition, as does sales, as does marketing and rarely do the definitions meet.  I actually had one CEO tell me that a “lead” was anybody that had money to spend and he was serious.   But, even crazier than that is when you find that the people within the marketing organization, itself, have different definitions.

If your organization is in this situation, then you might as well bag it, because all of your marketing efforts are doomed to fail.   If there isn’t agreement on what constitutes a “lead,” then everything else falls apart.

There are certainly other factors that affect marketing’s ability to generate a “lead” that sales will accept, but having an agreed upon definition is the first and most important step in the lead generation and management process.  Everyone –management, sales, and marketing — has to have the same definition.

Notice, I have not defined what a “lead” is.  And, there’s a very good reason for not doing so.  The definition of a “lead” is industry, business and market dependent. What is a “lead” for one business, it not necessarily a “lead” for another business.  Whether you use B.A.N.T. or some other criteria to define a “lead,” you need to develop your own definition and then get universal acceptance of that definition within your organization.

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Tags: Lead Generation, Lead Management, Marketing, Customer Acquisition
Category: Customer Acquisition

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Dudley Stevenson, founder and CEO of DWS Associates, has over thirty-five years’ experience in consumer marketing, business-to-business marketing, and direct marketing, including developing, planning, and implementing go-to-market strategies. He's also the author of "Marketing Direct: Breaking Through The Clutter." Working with organizations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies, he and his team have helped clients such as IBM, Sony, Neiman Marcus, Arizona Highways, Marshall Field & Co., Mrs. Field’s, UNICEF, and Patagonia implement successful direct marketing programs. A longtime member of the Direct Marketing Association and the American Marketing Association, Stevenson is also a sought-after speaker. He’s given hundreds of presentations and workshops on marketing and direct marketing. His “Marketing Planning 101” workshop alone has reached more than 100,000 marketing and sales professionals.


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