A Guide for Marketing Leadership to Champion Lead Flow for Their Building Products Brand

New business leads travel through two different worlds within one universe. The brand is the universe, and the two separate worlds are marketing and sales. When both worlds are in sync, the brand is in harmony. Qualified leads flow in, the opportunity pipeline expands, win rates increase, and the brand grows and becomes more profitable.

However, when the rhythm is off, breakdowns in momentum occur. Opportunities dry up, win rates suffer, and business declines.

Marketing has the responsibility for taking the lead in sustaining this harmony. Here are ten ways to ensure marketing and sales build a strong rhythm together.

1. Build a Shared Definition of “A Good Lead”

Agreeing on the definition of a qualified lead is the first step for marketing and sales alignment. Marketing leadership should host a workshop with sales leadership to profile what an ideal customer looks like, and align on defining a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and sales qualified lead (SQL). In addition, documenting the disqualification criteria is equally important.

2. Collaborate with Sales Leadership on Campaign Plans

Marketing thinks in terms of journeys and funnels, while sales thinks in conversations. Empower sales leadership to have a voice during the marketing journey and campaign development. Make sure all parties are aligned on goals, target profiling, desired journeys, and messaging. Make sales a collaborator versus a critic.

3. Agree on a Lead Follow-Up Process

In the same workshop, marketing and sales leadership need to agree on a service structure for lead follow up. Determine which sales personnel receive the lead immediately after being qualified, set up a reasonable timeframe for the lead to be followed up on by the salesperson, and establish a minimal number of attempts to connect with the prospect.

4. Enforce Accountability with Closed-Loop Feedback

Leads are gold and should be treated that way. That means creating accountability for both the sales and marketing teams. Marketing should send leads that are organized and complete in a timely manner, while sales must clearly accept or reject every lead with a rationale for the rejections. Both accepted and rejected leads should be analyzed by marketing with the intent for continuous targeting and message optimization.

5. Measure Lead Performance

Beyond measuring the accept/rejection rates, marketing and sales should maintain performance metrics as the leads travel through the process. For MQLs, track the SQL conversion rate. For SQLs, track the number of opportunities created against the total SQLs. As a measurement structure takes hold, the goal should be to measure pipeline contribution by marketing source and revenue per lead source. Again, the goal is to measure and optimize the root origin of all leads.

6. Create Regular Joint Reporting Reviews

On either a weekly or bi-weekly cadence, marketing and sales leadership need to commit to a review meeting to analyze lead quality trends over time and identify any gaps in targeting or messaging. This can improve lead quality and volume. Periodic lead audits can also be useful tools, allowing leadership to sample leads together to determine if the quality is as expected.

This review should also examine if there are any issues in the pipeline where deals are getting stuck. In addition, win rate trends – both growing and declining – can be helpful in uncovering sales issues further downstream that might be related to sales messaging, sales support, or non-competitive product/service offerings. In some ways, it’s marketing’s responsibility to help solve the issues until the sale happens.

7. Implement Lead Scoring that Matches Performance

CRMs come with standard, preset lead scoring functions. But every brand’s prospects and sale processes are unique. To build maximum trust in lead scoring, the parameters need to be continuously refined based on actual win data. Give the sales team a voice in scoring criteria to build trust quicker.

8. Tie Marketing KPIs to Revenue, Not Just Activity or Lead Volume

To further bridge the chasm between marketing and sales, marketing can prioritize revenue-based performance indicators over higher-funnel marketing performance indicators. While those marketing KPIs are important early success indicators, having a better balance of marketing and revenue goals builds credibility in the eyes of sales and the C-suite.

Revenue-based KPIs for marketing include pipeline sources, pipeline influence, and cost per opportunity, not just the number of leads or cost per lead. To encourage a broader view, compensation incentives can be tied to shared goals for conversion quality, as well as recognition for collaboration.

9. Use CRM Discipline as a Non-Negotiable

Building new habits, like CRM adoption, can be a challenge for sales teams. This is especially true for the building industry, where products and product systems can be complex, requiring seasoned sales experts with years of experience. They’ve built successful ways of working and are at times reticent to change, but in the information age, access to quick and accurate lead status data is a must. Dashboards, mandatory fields, and compliance are table stakes to stay competitive, and enforcement by sales leadership is critical.

10. Create a Lead Recycling Loop

Not every lead is a ready buyer. Marketing is responsible for managing non-priority leads for ongoing nurturing, while sales provides input on which leads warrant continued nurturing efforts.

How Leading Brands in the Building Segment Are Doing It

Leading brands in the building industry such as Caterpillar, Armstrong, and James Hardie are setting the standard by focusing on what truly matters. They organize their efforts around the buyer’s journey rather than internal departments; measure pipeline and revenue instead of just leads; and maintain strict process discipline across both marketing and sales teams.

Now, it’s your turn to find your rhythm and drive stronger pipeline performance.

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