Only around half (52%) of B2B marketers and salespeople believe that their teams are properly aligned to achieve business goals, according to a recent LeanData survey [download page]. Such misalignment could be leading to routing issues, with the report finding that on average 1 in every 4 leads is routed to the incorrect account owner.
Some teams are slow to update their lead routing rules, as well, with almost one-third (29.5%) doing so once a year or less.
Overall, fewer than half (43%) believe that their current lead routing process is creating an ideal customer experience, with many disagreeing (35%) or unsure (22%).
Obviously, this data is beneficial to LeanData, which offers intelligent lead management solutions, but it’s also true that a desire to improve lead management has certainly been central to the move towards greater use of marketing automation.
The LeanData study is based on a survey of 527 sales and marketing professionals, with the former representing 35% of the sample and the latter 65%. The results show that these teams disagree quite vehemently on the extent to which sales follows up with marketing-generated leads. In fact, while 61% of sales leaders said their teams always follow up immediately with such leads, only half as many (30%) marketing leaders said the same.
That brings to mind recent research from Altify, in which 71% of sales respondents agreed that their sales team is effective at qualifying sales opportunities, compared to just 52% of marketing respondents agreeing. Of course, sales had something to say about marketing, too: while 61% of marketers felt their team was competent at delivering reasonable numbers of qualified sales opportunities, just one-third (34%) of salespeople felt the same way.
Returning to the LeanData study, the results indicate that the majority (57%) of respondents are relying on Salesforce assignment rules to route leads, while about one-third are manually routing leads.
In terms of desired lead management capabilities that currently aren’t in the toolkit for respondents, de-duping incoming leads and the existing database (58%) is the most prominent wish, followed by automatically routing leads and contacts within a target account to the same rep (42%).
Only about one-quarter of respondents said they believe their lead management works great right now and isn’t in need of any further capabilities.
