A sales lead black hole is a term used to name those leads generated by marketing departments and that sales reps don’t follow up. It is stated that sales reps let go about 70% of the leads generated by marketing campaigns.
One of the main reasons sales reps stop to follow up marketing leads is because it may interfere with other sales reps tasks like self-generated leads follow-up, nurture existing accounts or administrative daily tasks. Also, sometimes these leads are qualified and perceived as unworthy or with poor quality.
Disagreements about classifying leads can also cause sales reps to lose customers in the sales lead black hole. Maybe those customers are likely to buy in the future, but they end up nowhere and, eventually, big business opportunities are lost.
Maybe the sales lead black hole can’t be completely eliminated, but you sure can minimize its effect and recurrence. You can incorporate an important process to your company: smarketing. This means integrating the sales and marketing processes so their functions can have a common integrated approach. This way, all the leads generated by marketing campaigns can turn into a valuable asset.
Another thing to do is motivating your sales reps to follow up on marketing leads by requiring the marketing department to prequalify leads. And, why not, give an extra compensation or a special target to accomplish marketing leads follow up. Encouraging your sales reps to follow up absolutely all leads will lead to close more deals.
Poor follow up on leads is not a small problem, it is a big problem. Just imagine those leads ending up in another dimension and maybe another universe, one controlled by your competition. So, if you want to encourage sales reps to follow-up leads via your compensation plan don’t’ think it twice and use Blitz, the perfect software for an accurate commission plan management.