How to perfect the Handoff of a lead from Marketing to Sales

Lead Conversion – when to convert a lead to a Contact and Account pair is at the heart of assigning a qualified prospect to Sales to initiate the Sales process. A Contact, by definition is anyone you have ‘Made Contact’ with. This is the simplest division of the Leads vs the Contacts database.

Knowing who your organization has been in contact with vs those that have yet to be followed up with is a clear pivot point in any business. The definition of ‘Qualified Prospect’ is also defined separately within each company and changes over time. With a good process in place, Marketing has a defined strategy of what datapoints need collecting in order to consider a lead ‘Quailified’ but with enough flexibility to override this and handoff the lead quickly, for a lead goes cold quickly and can’t sit in the unqualified state for too long or you risk losing them. A flexible CRM system that makes it easy to define the rules of lead conversion and automate this process with customizable workflow is one of the key aspects of any CRM system.

Poor handoff of qualified leads with stifle your sales efforts. Also, sales and Marketing must be using a shared system to ensure real time handoff, routing and notification to allow Sales to follow up in real time, with up to date information and maximize her chance of successfully closing the sale.