One of my favorite blogs to follow is the Hubspot Inbound Marketing Blog – I get lots of ideas on how to drive sales leads and referrals from this blog.

Katherine Derum described her experience of going into a retail store as an example of B2C marketing/sales integration that could be applied at a B2B level. She makes the following points in her blog article:

All too often I hear of marketing teams and sales teams running in different directions.  A marketing team could do an excellent job of bringing in leads, however if the sales team is not prepared or educated on how to take a lead further down the sales cycle, there is no gain.  While a retailer doesn’t necessarily drive leads, they can be a perfect example of marketing and sales working well together.

Before you jump to the conclusion that lead quality is the problem, first find out what your sales team is doing with your leads.  How are they opening the conversation?  What suggestions might you offer that would open up the discussion?   You know your potential customer as well or better than sales.  You might find augmenting what’s happening AFTER the lead is generated can increase lead quality opposed to adjusting how it was generated.