Thought Leadership Interview #9: 2009 Buzzword Courtesy of Denny Head: The Lead Refinery

I worked with Denny Head at Avaya Inc., where he built and managed what he calls the “lead refinery process.” The process generated over $1.6 billion in sales qualified leads. Impressive, no? Now Head is working as consultant for eDemand Leads Consulting LLC, helping clients build a refinery of their own.

I, for one, believe in Head’s refinery for a lot of reasons, but the main thing to remember is this: the ultimate mix for lead management is both phone AND marketing automation. One approach is better than nothing, but mixing the two together is extremely potent. Head understands that technology alone will not solve the problem — it must be coupled with proven processes from everything ranging from the demand campaign to closed loop reporting.

Industry analyst estimate that 80 percent of marketing leads are wasted due to poor quality and the inability to get leads to the right salesperson at the right time. Head combines sales and marketing experience in the high tech industry to provide the unique view of quality leads from the sales perspective.

Here’s what he offered up to The Funnelholic:

1. What are the three trends you see emerging in 2009?

The most important thing to remember now is that we’re in a bad economy and marketing budgets are getting cut. So instead of trends emerging, keep this in mind:

Leads that result in real pipeline and revenue are more important than ever. Companies are trying to fix their lead systems to avoid 80 percent of the demand gen dollars going to waste.
The key to a productive lead system is making sure that the leads meet the quality standards of your sales channels. They customers don’t like or don’t use your leads, your program is wasted.
Lead programs must take a holistic approach to viewing the entire lead process from the initial marketing inquiry creation to the final closed-loop lead-management process. This includes:

Generating demand from both internal multimodal campaigns and external data sources that can deliver high quality leads.
A quality MDB with ongoing hygiene processes.
Automated lead management including scoring and lead nurturing.
A lead-qualification process that delivers leads to the sales force.
Automated lead-management processes routing customers to the right sales rep at the right time.
A lead-management process that holds marketing and sales accountable for closed-loop results.

2. What are the biggest challenges for 2009?

Delivering and documenting an acceptable ROI (return on investment) on your marketing spend. Too many marketing programs are just PowerPoint activities and don’t deliver the goods As times get tougher there is more pressure from sales and marketing leadership to “save the quarter.” With longer sales cycles and customers’ hesitation to spend, you cannot save the quarter. You need to invest in long-term, sound practices that generate leads on a consistent and sustainable basis month in and month out. There are no magic bullets that will save the quarter.
Also, knowing which marketing investment has the best ROI, and how you can measure it will be challenging. Are you shifting your money to the best lead sources or just doing the same thing over and over?

3. What are three metrics that B2B marketers should care about and why?

Measure the right thing — i.e., the pipeline and not lead volume. It’s only what sales does with your leads that counts. Ten thousand junk leads are still junk.
Know your lead-conversion rates from your lead sources. Find out which ones have the highest conversion rates into MQL.
Cost per lead is the cost of the lead inquiry plus the cost of qualification into an MQL. When you look at all of your lead sources under this method, it becomes very clear which ones have the best payoff and ROI. Invest in quality.

4. What are the top oversights marketers are making regarding lead generation?

See my previous answer.

5. What will you prescribe to marketers to carry out effective lead generation?