New Research Shows BtoB Marketers Still Lack ROI Measurement Capabilities
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BtoB marketers are making progress with automating their sales and marketing processes, but a new research study shows there is still substantial room for improvement in managing leads and sharing data across sales force and marketing automation systems.
Recent research from the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) found that 64.9% of BtoB marketers cannot track ROI, while 58% do not qualify inquiries prior to lead distribution.
When respondents were asked if they track marketing ROI, only 14.6% said they do it within the SFA/CRM system. The study, which was conducted by The Velos Group , also found that 20.5% of marketers track ROI, but not within the SFA/CRM system itself, and 64.9% don’t track it at all.
James W. Obermayer, executive director of the SLMA pointed out that the lack of ROI measurement is a significant missed opportunity for BtoB marketers. “With 84% of the companies using an SFA/CRM system (not to mention those who use a marketing automation process), why isn’t ROI tracking more common? The tools are there. And when asked if they qualify inquiries before sending them to Sales, 58% said ‘no.’ Companies appear to believe that salespeople should qualify their own leads.”
The Sales Lead Management Study surveyed 170 marketers during 2009. Presidents and CEOs made up 48.8% of survey respondents, while 24.1% held sales and marketing executive titles, and 27.1% held operations or other titles.
When BtoB marketers were asked about their biggest concerns regarding lead management, the three biggest concerns were:
1. The companies do not maintain a Central Prospect/Customer database (22.6%),
2. Leads are not qualified before they are sent to the Sales organization (15.1%) and
3. The inability of companies to track the ROI of their Marketing programs (14.3%.)
Marketing Automation
The study also gauged marketers’ satisfaction with their current Sales Force Automation system. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Extremely Dissatisfied and 10 being Extremely Satisfied, 85% rated their satisfaction at 7 or less and fully 55.9% rate their satisfaction as a 5 or less.
Marketing automation is not prominent among respondents, as over 50% of the companies still don’t use an automated Sales Force Automation (SFA)/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. Only 11.2% of companies are using a Sales Force Automation program to generate their forecast reports.
Nearly half (44.7%) of respondents have no formal process to forecast sales, and 24% are still using Excel.
This approach makes it almost impossible not only to predict the sales that will close in any given month or quarter, but also to track the ROI for any Marketing, as the original Lead Source is seldom associated with the deals that actually do result in sales, the report said.
Lead Qualification
The report found that marketers generally feel that salespeople should qualify their own leads. 58% of the companies do not qualify their marketing inquiries before they are sent to sales.
The SLMA maintains that, for companies, it is more productive have a separate group qualify sales leads and only send qualified prospects to sales. Any administrative task that takes them away from selling is potentially condemning the company to lower sales and profits, the report said.
Researchers were surprised to see that 26.6% of larger companies do not use SFA software, primarily because companies that do use SFA/CRM are much more productive in their Sales organization and close a higher percentage of their leads than companies that do not use this software, the report said.
The report concluded that companies looking to increase sales and allocate marketing resources more effectively must invest time and resources in these critical business areas.