Home/Pune practice/Demand generation
Service · demand generation
Marketing counted four hundred. Sales counted eleven.
Both numbers were accurate. They were measuring different things and reporting them as one, which is why that meeting happens every quarter in almost every company I walk into.
Fix the lead-quality argument See what survives a real filter
- First step
- One two-hour session with sales
- Then
- Forms, CRM stages and reporting rebuilt to match
- Effect
- Volume falls, useful conversations rise
- Channels
- Search, technical content, LinkedIn, events
Industrial manufacturer · alignment
Reconnecting sales and marketing with one definition of a lead
Marketing reported hundreds of leads from exhibitions and digital campaigns. Sales said most were irrelevant. The relationship between the two teams had become genuinely difficult.
Both teams were right, because they were measuring different things. Marketing counted enquiries. Sales counted people worth calling. Nobody had ever written down which was which.
Qualification criteria agreed in one room: application, authority, potential value and purchasing timeline. Then lead forms, CRM stages, follow-up emails and monthly reporting all rebuilt around the same four.
The total lead count fell sharply. The number of useful sales conversations rose. The quarterly argument stopped, because there was now one number both teams recognised.
Marketing has to be willing to report a smaller figure. That is the entire price of ending this, and it is worth paying.
What survives a real definition
Run last quarter's leads through the four criteria before changing anything. The number that survives is usually between a tenth and a third of what marketing reported, and it lands almost exactly on what sales said was useful.
That single comparison settles the argument in one meeting. It is uncomfortable and it is faster than any amount of process design.
Change the marketing target at the same time as the definition. Measuring marketing on qualified pipeline rather than lead count removes the incentive that created the problem.
What the programme looks like
For an industrial buyer with a long cycle, this is narrow and deep rather than broad. Reach is not your constraint.
The qualification standard
Four criteria in plain language, built into the form, the CRM stages and the monthly report. The cheapest item on this list and the one most often skipped.
Search built around applications
Buyers search the problem and the specification, not your product name. Application and selection pages outperform product listings by a wide margin in this category.
Technical content as the engine
Application notes, selection guides, comparison tables and FAQs. Slower to produce than social posts and they compound for years. Covered on the content page.
Named account programmes
Where the buying universe is a few hundred companies, a tiered target list with a coverage plan beats broadcast every time.
Paid, used narrowly
Tightly scoped search on high-intent terms and account-targeted LinkedIn. Broad awareness spend rarely repays itself at this scale and I will say so rather than sell it.
Pipeline stages that match reality
Including sample and design-win stages that imported CRM models leave out. Without them the forecast is fiction. I build this on Vyndeal, which I wrote for exactly this motion.
One report the promoter trusts
Weighted pipeline, honest attribution, and a note on what we stopped doing. Predictable enough that marketing stops being questioned monthly.
A campaign producing four hundred enquiries and eleven real conversations is worse than one producing sixty and thirty, because someone spends their week on the first one.
Before you ask
Our agency reports great numbers and sales disagrees.
Very common, and usually both are reporting accurately against different definitions. Before changing agency, agree the criteria and re-run last quarter against them. Sometimes the agency is fine and the brief was wrong.
Should we be posting on social media?
If you sell components to OEMs, not as a priority. It is a reasonable employer branding channel and a weak demand channel for that buyer. For consumer-facing businesses the answer changes entirely.
Do we need marketing automation?
No, and buying it before agreeing the definition simply automates the disagreement. A spreadsheet and a disciplined weekly review will get you most of the way. Tooling comes when the process is real.
How long before this shows up in revenue?
Conversation quality changes within weeks because the filter is immediate. Pipeline effects show in one to two quarters. In design-in categories revenue follows the customer's own production timeline, so nine to eighteen months is normal and anyone promising faster is describing an exception.
Send me last quarter's lead report
With the sales team's view of it, if you can get that too. Comparing the two is usually enough to show where the real problem sits, and it takes me an afternoon rather than a project.
Fix the lead-quality argument See case studies
Kunal Waghmare · Padmavati Hills, Mokai Vasti, Bavdhan, Pune, Maharashtra 411021
office@quiamo.com · +91 90216 02686