Brian Carroll doesn’t seem to think so.  He claims that only a small portion of inquiries are actually sales ready.  I guess the assumption here is that true sales leads close at a higher rate and inquiries don’t. 

According to him we should create a universal lead definition.  Check out his post for yourself.  

He encourages sales and marketing to get together and figure out the below:

1) What makes a good sales lead?
2) What information is wanted in order to qualify leads as being sales ready?
3) Delineate “sales ready” verses “nurture” lead statuses.
4) Identify key information the sales person would value in speaking with a prospect

Event marketing teams could absolutely benefit from this exercise.  The majority of the leads we generate are passed to sales immediately.  We may decide that this is the best strategy for us, but perhaps we can pre-qualify these leads at the acquisition stage through questions and actions.  In our business we delineate inquiries as either active or passive - active because they want to hear from us directly and passive in that they grabbed a piece of content on their own and don’t require a follow up.  We see results from both lead types but actives convert at a higher rate.  Maybe it’s time to create a third or fourth category here.  Any ideas?

Share