You think this would be a simple question. However, for a lot of B2B executives, the answer is tough to pinpoint When I ask a new Fusion Marketing Partners client or prospect “How many leads do you need?”, I often get one of three types of answers:
“I don’t know.” or “I have no idea.”
“A lot more than I am getting now.”
“X number of new leads a month, but I don’t know why.”
Often, I get different answers from different people in the organization. The marketing VP believes he or she is producing plenty of leads, but the sales VP disagrees. In fact, it is rare to find a sales VP that believes the lead quantity (or quality) is sufficient. But that’s only part of the problem. The biggest and most important problem to overcome is to get marketing, sales and the C-suite on the same page when it comes to the required number of leads and the budget necessary to get them.
We accomplish this by creating a service level agreement between marketing and sales that specifies exactly what marketing intends to deliver to the sales force each month. I deliberately emphasized the word “intends” because the marketing department must be very serious about meeting this commitment – just as the sales department has its own commitment (number of sales, revenue, etc.).
The actual analysis requires specific knowledge of your company’s revenue goals, but let me offer a simplified scenario that will give you the concept. To work your monthly lead target, you will need seven pieces of data. If you don’t have all this data, use what you do have and begin to collect the missing data:
- Monthly revenue target – your monthly sales goal from all revenue sources
- Marketing driven revenue – the portion of the total monthly revenue that marketing is responsible for, not counting cross-sales, up-sales and revenue that comes in (regardless of what marketing does)
- Average sales price (ASP) – the average revenue contribution from each new sale
- Number of marketing-driven deals – this is the marketing-driven revenue divided by the ASP
- Opportunity-to-sale ratio – the percentage of pipeline opportunities that you close
- Qualified lead-to-opportunity ratio – how many qualified leads it takes to produce one opportunity
- Inquiry-to-qualified-lead ratio – how many inquires it takes to produce a qualified lead
There is an article at the FMP website that walks you through the numbers involved in creating your lead plan. The point is that you need to know two very important things. First, exactly how many leads/inquiries you need to reach your target revenue goals; and second, your acquisition cost per lead/new customer order. Your ability to quantify these numbers and then deliver them to the sales force will make you a hero in the executive suite. And most importantly, your marketing budget will be viewed as a critical investment, not as just another expense.
To start calculating your own lead requirements, view the complete article. Happy Marketing and Good Selling.
