Eric Wittlake blogs from the Sirius Decisions Annual Summit about a new demand waterfall (i.e., funnel) that may in fact better describe a holistic view of B2B demand generation, organized by a new set of demand generation acronyms.
According to the writer, Sirius Decisions is “now recognizing three distinct” sources of qualified leads:
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Automation Qualified Leads
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Teleprospecting Qualified Leads
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Teleprospecting Generated Leads
Including sales generated leads in the updated demand waterfall recognizes that not all leads come through marketing. The clients that I serve recognize that marketing automation does provide a significant portion of MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads), or inquiries as I like to call them.
In certain organizations, MQL go straight to the sales team for further qualifying. If the lead scoring process is tested and proven, the sales team should have no problem following up on these leads. Some of my clients hire my firm to handle the TQL (Teleprospecting Qualified Leads) function, freeing up the sales team to focus on leads only after a live qualifying conversation has taken place.
Still there are many organizations that rely on a heavy dose of TGL (Teleprospecting Generated Leads) to discover additional contacts that haven’t responded to marketing outreach.This is common among organizations that have a strong outbound sales function to drive a higher quality, sales-ready lead.
Sirius has recognized this by calling out the sales generated demand generation function with the acronyms SGL (Sales Generated Lead), SAL (Sales Accepted Lead) and SQL (Sales Qualified Lead, not to be confused with the database).
If these new acronyms don’t confuse, they may actually allow sales and marketing managers to align their demand generation efforts, and create the proper accountabilities among all stakeholders.
