The Handoff Process

Handing off a Lead from Marketing to Sales

Why is it only one way?

Depending on the size of your company, handing off leads from marketing to sales may be simple or complex. Each lead may be fully detailed, including all relevant data like email, phone number, source, campaign, company, title, and many others. On the other hand, leads may only move to sales with a first name, last initial, and a Gmail email address.

Many steps lead to the handoff on the marketing side, from developing campaigns to ensuring a seamless connection to a CRM. Once the salesperson receives the lead, there may be a quick phone call to attempt to book a demo, or a lot of research into why exactly the person might be a good fit to be a buyer.

Everything comes together at the handoff – a term used to define the moment a lead moves from marketing “ownership” to sales “ownership.” To define who now has control over contact and ensuring the relevant information is included and leveraged to make a potential sale. While done at the push of a button (or even automatically), it is important to analyze what happens, why it happens, and what might even be making your teams mad at each other in the process.

What often happens is the handoff process is only discussed in meetings about how bad it is or what is wrong with the leads. Marketing sends over the most recent webinar leads, sales gets them passed out round robin or by territory and begins outreach.

“Why are there so many Gmail addresses?” “This person is from a non-profit, why would they ever spend any money with us?” “Interns don’t count, right?” “I can’t find this person on LinkedIn, are they real?”

Without knowing where leads come from (not in a simple – they come from marketing – sense) and how they arrived on your lead list is difficult as a salesperson. Occasionally a perfect lead comes in – ready to buy, the perfect role and company, with the right need at the right time. This is rare, and while magical, can dissuade you from thinking that all leads are terrible momentarily. If the next five the come in as unqualified or unworthy, life goes back to wondering why you’re not getting one-call close leads every time.

Real dollars are spent to bring in leads – from paid ads on social to coordinating time in a space for an interview featured in the next webinar. People’s time is spent editing, coming up with questions, designing graphics, and narrowing down copy to its purest form. When it’s not your team’s dollars, questions arise on how it’s being spent and the effort put forward if most new leads don’t turn into sales.

Deep down, everyone knows it’s a numbers game. The more leads you get, the more deals you close. The more you begin to understand the ideal client profile and your target prospects. At a certain point this may saturate the market, leading to expand beyond your first definitions of who will buy and leading into new, previously unexplored corners of the market. Creative solutions become necessary, which are not always easy or proven, and can throw off even the most seasoned sales teams.

What if – instead of looking at the process as a handoff – we look at it as a feedback loop? If the sharing of information back and forth is valued higher than the pure act of giving another team a potential deal. The work that goes into both funnels to turn an audience of millions into a lead and then hundreds of leads into a deal is massive. The learnings along the way would benefit both funnels and teams, but is often siloed because of structure, actions, and tools.

Sales and marketing joint meetings run on metrics – what deals were closed, how many, and for how much. How many leads from this webinar, eBook or LinkedIn ad campaign. Taking the quantitative first works at a high level, but telling the story about what drove those numbers is equally important.

I’ve been in meetings where sales talks about their most recent or biggest deals in a group setting with other teams. These can be very helpful if done efficiently and without devolving into unimportant factors. Understanding why someone bought your product or service is key for the company, from Product and Customer Success and all the way up to the CEO. Understanding why someone became a lead and then did or did not buy is also important but rarely discussed.

If you can take the time to follow a lead from its origin to its end in the sales process (unresponsive, demo, contract, closed deal) you can back into what might work with the next lead. If you can analyze what happened along the way, especially what the lead said about your company or product, you can back into how to get the next lead.

What ultimately should happen, but often does not due to time and resource constraints, is to know where a lead came from, why it turned into a prospect or deal, and how that can be worked back to bring in or exclude similar people. It’s tough in the middle of multiple deals or active campaigns to reflect, and that’s natural. The amount that is being missed, however, due to focusing on what is only in front of you is certainly costing your company deals and dollars.