In a recent report by B2B Marketing Today, respondents said their two top priorities for lead generation were "Reaching the right decision makers" (46%) and "Improving lead quality" (43%).

When I read those statistics in The New Formula for Generating High Quality Leads in 2011, I just thought, "Duh?"

And whilst there's some interesting stuff in the white paper, the shock headline that improving lead quality is about "Quality over Quantity" just made me wonder why that was such a revelation?

Maybe it's because it's something that I've been banging on about for such a long time (see my post from 12 months ago as an example, Lead generation is the engine... sales is where the rubber meets the road) that I find it so surprising that this should be anything other than obvious.

After all, targeting and qualification are not exactly anything new in terms of lead generation.

The reality is that B2B marketing has been focused on the growth of online and it's ability to produce tons of leads at a lower cost-per-lead than more traditional channels.

And, if you think that this is something that been building over the last 3-4 years in B2B channels, then it's not surprising that the emphasis has been on getting systems set-up, generating traffic and getting leads.

But there's definitely been a trend over the last 12 months or so to focus on lead scoring, lead quality, etc.

I suspect that fingers are now being pointed at most marketing departments. And, if quality is on the agenda then sales are doing the pointing.

Lead quality and qualification sits between marketing and sales. It's the interface where leads are handed over (and handed back).

Once you've been through the loop of generating leads, qualifying them and tracking through to conversion you always start looking at lead quality. Which inevitably comes down to targeting, qualification and timing.

And one thing is for sure, when you do this the quantity of leads will always significantly decrease.

Labels: b2b lead generation, lead qualification, lead quality