Sales Rejected Leads - What Now?

Marketing Qualified Leads: (MQLs for short) are leads that have been through your scoring/nurturing program and have scored high enough to warrant sales interaction.

No matter how accurate your scoring program is, no matter how relevent your nurturing programs are, sales will still reject a portion of these MQLs.

We often get asked what to do with these sales rejected MQL leads.

The answer really depends on why sales is rejecting the MQL in the first place.

WHY IS SALES REJECTING THE LEAD?
Let’s assume that the reason for sales rejection is NOT that their score is artificially high, that it is not due to the scoring program itself being out of whack.

Let's also assume that sales has actually communicated directly with the lead and discovered a red flag, which has caused sales to reject the lead.

I have outlined some of the more common red flags and provided possible solutions to think about for each:

The lead is interested but doesn’t have the budget –

1. Add the lead to a Sales Nurturing Program that includes promotions/discount programs/specific product advantages, etc. (This would be a marketing-driven campaign but the nurturing emails appear to have come from the sales rep, using their specific signatures)
2. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
3. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Sales Nurturing’ scoring program

The lead is interested but doesn’t have the authority to make the purchase –

1. Find out who the right decision maker is
2. Add them to the main scoring program
3. Reset the original lead’s implicit/explicit score to 0
4. Adjust the scoring criteria’s “job Role/Job Title’ accordingly
5. Add the original lead back into the main scoring program, allowing them to manage their email preferences

The lead is interested in your company but is not interested in the solution they were exposed to –

1. Discover the correct solution
2. Add the lead to a solution-specific nurturing campaign
3. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
4. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Solution-Specific Nurturing’ scoring program

The lead is interested but now is not the right time –

1. Verify correct area of interest
2. Add the lead to a solution-specific nurturing campaign
3. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
4. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Solution-Specific Nurturing’ scoring program

The lead is NOT interested in your company at all (this would be highly unlikely if the scoring program is set up correctly)

1. Ask if the lead would like to globally unsubscribe?
2. If yes, do so
3. If no, verify area of interest
4. Add the lead to a solution-specific nurturing campaign
5. Option 1: Add them back into the main scoring program - Reset their implicit score to 0
6. Option 2: Add them to a ‘Solution-Specific Nurturing’ scoring program

Note: All of the above implies that it would take multiple implicit activities to get rejected leads scored high enough to warrant sending to sales again. Obviously if all it takes is filling out 1 form to get them to an A1 score, there is a problem with the scoring.
Next Steps:

1. Sit down with sales and come up with your own top 5 reasons why your sales team typically rejects MQLs
2. Develop a process for managing each scenario

Conclusion:
What to do with rejected MQLs is a highly evolved problem to have actually. For most companies this isn't even on the radar. So congratulate yourself for having a better problem than most!
Proper care and continued nurturing of these rejected MQLs at the level of detail described above takes planning but may well be worth the effort, especially considering the investment marketing has already made in actually getting them to the MQL stage in the first place.
Maybe we should modify the popular mantra, "No Lead Left Behind" and expand it to "No MQL Lead Left Behind".

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Lead Nurturing Best Practices


Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant


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You had me at 'Submit'

If there is one area of focus that will almost always get you a quick win, it’s forms.

Most B2B forms exist for 2 reasons:

1. They feed new leads into the database
2. They gather additional information about existing leads

Hard to imagine a more powerful (and inexpensive) marketing tool. Yet the typical form drop-off rate is well over 70%, maybe higher. That leaves lots of room for improvement and measurable results.

Quick Win #1: Shorten your form – now shorten it again
A good rule of thumb is to limit the # of initial fields to only those most people won’t fib about.

According to Marketing Sherpa, your best 3 ‘truth fields’ are:

· Name
· Email Address
· Industry

And if Industry isn’t important to your segmentation strategy, remove it and only have 2 initial fields. Remember, we’re just trying to get a conversation going – tough to do without an email address.
Quick Win #2: Tell them what you already know about themNever ask for information you already have. Leverage Eloqua’s form field pre-population feature as much as possible. In one recent test, 76% of all form submissions came from pre-populated forms.

Quick Win #3: Make it a Fair ExchangeI wrote about this in a recent blog. The concept is this: # of form fields = value of asset. Asking for 15 fields for a General Industry White Paper isn’t a fair exchange.

Quick Win #4: Get rid of the RESET buttonAccording to some reports, as many as 22% are still using this legacy button. Get rid of it and you should see a definite lift in form submissions.

Quick Win #5: Try making all fields optionalYea, I know this is a scary one but in one study, registration form submissions increased 15.38% when prospects were told registration was not required.

If you’re looking to make an immediate impact on ROI, I can’t think of a faster, easier and more cost-effective area of focus than your forms.

BTW: Don’t forget to benchmark your current form drop-off rates so you can track your success.

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about Form Optimization Best Practices

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant
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Marketing Stimulation

Our tolerance of and need for stimulation has definitely increased over the years.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that TV shows realized they were losing the attention of the audience, so they began to move toward much shorter camera shots. The average shot went from maybe 10 to 15 seconds all the way down to about 1-2 seconds. Then the camera got jittery to add even more stimulation. Still this doesn’t seem to be enough.

I’ve noticed lately that both my 11-year-old son and my 14-year-old daughter cannot JUST watch TV. They actually get bored, even with jittery 1-second scenes.

They now need to be on their laptops while watching TV at the same time to be stimulated. It’s astonishing to watch. Yet they seem to have full retention of the TV show and full retention of what they are doing on the computer all at the same time.

The other night I walked into my 18 year old’s room and saw him holding the house phone on one ear talking to a friend, a headset on the other ear talking to fellow online Call of Duty gamers in the heat of battle, all while text messaging his girlfriend on his mobile phone. As a baby boomer I would probably blow up trying to do this. For kids it seems second nature.

How will we stimulate the next generation? Might we end up sending our marketing messages 140 characters at a time? Or by then will it be down to 4 characters at a time -- and jittery?

P.S. By then YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will all have merged and will be called, "You Twit Face". (courtesy of Conan O'Brian).

 
Updated 5-8-12
Visit my brand new website and learn more about the new B2B Marketing Ecosystem

Steve Kellogg
-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant

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