I was having coffee with my friend Matt Fenwick of True North Writing the other day (keep an eye out for his upcoming book – Life without Lanyards in which i’ve got a chapter) and the discussion turned to a question he’d been mulling over for a while.. That being how do you know whether you’ll get better results in your business from hiring a marketer to build qualified leads and when do you need help with sales to close them? Its an interesting question and one thats overlooked by many business owners i’ve worked with..

The answer is a surprisingly simple one if you’re looking at your key performance indicators.. Those being, number of leads, and conversion rate.

I read a survey out of the US a little while ago (the source escapes me atm) but it suggested where sales teams and marketing teams were split that the median close rate for qualified leads was 10-20%. Now in my opinion thats pretty low. As a business owner i’d really want to see my sales team closing more qualified leads.. Of course, that does depend on what you classify a qualified lead as.  On the other hand, the same survey indicated that a small number of businesses were closing upwards of 90% of all leads that come into the business and sometimes sales teams are left with idle capacity.. My wife’s business – Penny Hyde : your personal property shopper is a bit like this. She seems to have an uncanny ability to make her clients feel at ease and address their concerns, and as a result has an amazing closing rate.

The answer I gave to matt was this : If your closing rate is low then your time and resources are probably better spent on up-skilling your sales team, or looking at how you package and present your product/service to prospects to present a more compelling value proposition. If the reverse is true, and like Penny you’ve got a great closing rate and need more leads coming into the business, then a look at your marketing strategies and how you generate more qualified leads will get you better bang for buck.

As you can imagine getting the right balance is key. Enough leads that your sales team isn’t idle, but not so many that you’re spending on marketing that you cant convert.