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A few weeks back I posted a couple of pieces on how quantifying is a more practical approach in sales than qualifying. Quantifying is Qualifying 2.0 and Quantify – Don’t Qualify.  But as I was preparing and presenting the life cycle of a sale using an integrated process through CRM Thursday, I explored a different angle on the issue. It was as we were talking about how you vet a lead sourced through social media before assigning it to sales.
It struck me at that point that the reason sales people at time have difficulty qualifying leads and prospects especially, is because it is not their job. It is very much the role of marketing, and once a lead has been properly nurtured and qualified, then it is up to sales to quantify and sell and in a word close the deal.

In preparing for the presentation there was a lot of discussion about who owns the process, more accurately who should and would be accountable for qualifying the lead on its way to becoming a prospect. It seemed that the marketing camp was happy to take credit when the process was successful, but not as ready to stand up and be accountable when the process did not yield the desired results.

As we broke down and parsed things further it became evident that by assigning ownership of qualifying to marketing, and quantifying to sales, you had much more optimal alignment of skills and to the process.

With all the focus and touting of Web 2.0, social media and more, it seems easy and perhaps logical to delegate qualifying of unvetted leads, nurturing them to threshold of readiness, to marketing, hold them accountable for the quality of that process.

This does not allow sales off the hook, in fact, by removing this function from sales, and having marketing deliver qualified leads, sales will have to extend the effort and consistently execute the process. Well it looks good on the white board, keep you posted about the real world.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto