In recent years, interpretation of sales and marketing have been blurred leading to confusion about the roles and responsibilities of each!

Many executives are unsure of how to structure their company's sales process because they are unsure of what lead generation is or who is responsible for bringing in qualified sales leads.

What is Lead Generation?

By definition, lead generation is a blend of marketing and sales which your company identifies and reaches out to qualified sales leads, or potential customers for your products and services. Think of it as a funnel with the wide end at the top.

Who's responsible for lead generation? – Typically, your sales and/or marketing team is responsible for "filling the funnel" with qualified leads.

Your products or services and your market, should use a variety of tactics to accomplish the mission including:

Targeted Market Research

Inbound marketing strategies including website integration, blogging, SEO, social media.

Outbound marketing strategies including direct mail, print advertising, media advertising, outdoor advertising.

Telemarketing/Telesales - callers who can reach out to targeted lists of potential customers.

These strategies should be integrated into a systematic plan, to which the goal is to prepare opportunities for your sales team.

Sales Calls

When qualified sales leads have been identified, the sales team needs to contact that lead and close the sale. It’s easier to convert a lead to a paying customer when there is more information available to begin with. The strategy being that your sales funnel has familiarized leads with your offerings and "warmed them up" to a purchase decision. Each sales person has their own style of closing a deal, and some companies offer

sales training, sales consulting, or outsourced sales to find the best sales effectiveness solution.

Where do the lines start to get blurred?

Today’s sales and marketing are no longer stored, departmental activities.

Consumers today, require a more hands-on, referral-based approach than in the past. Online shopping and social media have replaced direct sales and marketing tactics. Besides being a sales person, you must also be a marketer and a customer service rep, because consumers want a one-to-one relationship before they will buy.

It may not be possible to have one person responsible for all of these necessary roles, but today’s sales, marketing, or service organizations have to be highly integrated in order to succeed. For this success to be possible, messaging and real-time communications need to be aligned, meaning that marketers and sales people need to work together to nurture leads until they become customers, and then the sales team needs to work closely with customer service reps to ensure customer satisfaction and retention.

There isn't much difference between sales and lead generation these days. In today's online shopping world, the time factor can be seconds instead of days, weeks or months. For success, the entire sales-marketing-service cycle needs to be well understood, and your company may need to be remodeled to fit the new paradigms.

If you need expert lead generation services for your restoration, plumbing or HVAC company, then EForce Web is who you need to contact. We remain at the top for implementing lead generation services.