Idea #4: Want to help Sales the most in 2009? Give them better quality, not greater quantity, of leads.

This is the fourth in a series of articles examining ways to thrive, not just survive, in 2009.

The CMO of a mid-sized, U.S.-based wireless networking firm recently told me, “If I had to spend a dollar in today’s economic climate, I’d spend it all on getting better quality leads into the hands of my salespeople.”

If I had to spend a dollar in today’s economic climate, I’d spend it all on getting better-quality leads into the hands of my salespeople.

The CMO makes an important point. Not all leads are created equally. Some leads represent far greater potential than others. And to close more deals, it’s those leads that salespeople need to focus on. The question is, how can marketers quickly sort through general inquires to identify the ones who are most likely and ready to buy? How do you separate (with scale) the wheat from the chaff?

Lead scoring is part of the answer. But there’s nothing new there - most of you already have lead-scoring programs in place, likely based on a manual evaluation of demographic fit to your “ideal customer profile.”

What is new, though, is Co-Dynamic Lead Scoring. That’s the ability to score leads based on what prospects “say” and what they  actually “do,” through a combination of:

• 1. Demographic profiling: Typically “explicit” information, like industry, company size, title, etc.
• 2. Behavioral profiling: “Implicit” activity-based information, including Web site visits, email opens, Webinar attendance, whitepaper downloads, response to personalized direct mail with personalized URLs and more.

Using marketing automation software, Co-Dynamic Lead Scoring becomes possible in real time, and leads are tracked over time,  so they are only passed to sales teams once they reach a predetermined lead-score threshold (as mutually agreed upon by Sales and Marketing). This leaves the remaining “not-so-sales-ready” leads in the hands of Marketing for further relationship building over time. That brings us to Idea #5: Lead nurturing - no longer just a nice to have.

 Did you miss Idea #3? It’s about using marketing automation to do more with less.