3 Reasons Why Your MQLs Aren’t Converting to Pipeline.

You’ve done the job- built up a solid marketable database and an awesome nurture with great content and scoring. The MQLs are FINALLY flowing. This is a story we’ve all heard before and you probably know the ending- sales leadership is still unhappy with the results. For whatever reason, the MQLs you spent time, money, and effort on developing are not converting to the ever-elusive, yet so desired pipeline. What more could you have done? Well, there are three key items you might have missed.

You Don’t Have FIRM Buy-in With the Sales Team on What an MQL is.

If the selling organization, from the top down, isn’t bought into your team is delegating “Marketing Qualified” leads, your programs are setup to fail.  This is a delicate dance, because your sellers are going to want “ready to buy” leads, and you being the savvy marketer, that you are, know that these types of leads are limited in supply. Find the middle ground, get 100% buy-in—and watch the pipeline grow!

Your BDR/SDR Team is Understaffed or Over Worked. 

Does your SDR/BDR team have the bandwidth to cover all of the things that are being asked of them?  In some companies, SDR’s are responsible for following up on inbound inquiries, as well as hitting aggressive outbound prospecting minimums. There is only so much time in the day, and something has  to give.  What happens is (stop me if you’ve heard this story) the BDR/SDR focuses on only the highest quality inbound leads (Contact us, Demo), and appeasing their sales leader with outbound prospecting—leaving in some cases 60%+ of the marketing generated leads untouched.

There is No Documented Follow Up Process.

We’ve all heard it before. “Our sales team is the best of the best; they know how to follow up on leads”.  There should be a documented process for every type of MQL your marketing organization is generating.  Looking at the follow up process, these are the important questions to ask:

• What’s the SLA for MQL follow up?
• How many touches does each MQL get?
• What mediums is the follow up executed on?
• Is the follow up messaging agreed upon? 

Process is the fuel that drives consistent performance, and is especially relevant when ensuring the MQLs being generated are followed up on.

When you consider just how much work goes into generating an MQL from your marketing funnel, or how much money you paid a 3^rd party for outbound MQLs, can you really afford to have leads being kicked back to you? When it’s all said and done, the name of the game with MQLs is “conversions,” and if you’re not seeing that, it’s time to look into finding a supplement, whether that’s through an external source, or internally. The marketing funnel is tricky enough to manage, don’t allow outside influences prevent ROI from your hard work.

Find out how DemandScience can help you convert MQLs at a higher rate.