Marketers urged to revisit old leads

Re-engaging old prospects is one way companies can improve their lead generation, one expert has claimed.

Speaking at Marketing Sherpa's recent Business-to-Business Marketing Summit, Brian Carroll said that firms need to develop a way of encouraging sales teams to return 'dead' leads to the marketing department so that the can be improved.

He noted that around 80 per cent of leads generated by marketers are either ignored, discarded or lost.

"If you want to make a difference in the fourth quarter this year, go back to what you did in the first quarter of this year or the fourth quarter of last year and there's a lot of opportunity there," he told the audience.

He noted that using telemarketing calls to follow up on old prospects that had not shown interest in purchasing a company's product or service when they were first contacted can add millions of dollars worth of value to a company's sales pipeline.

Over 250 marketers attended the summit and other topics - such as increasing response rates, optimising lead generation and accelerating the leads currently in the sales pipeline - were also discussed.

Prior to the event taking place, Dr Flint McGlaughlin and Brian Carroll said on Marketing Sherpa's blog that putting the focus on producing high-quality prospects should be the focus for those running lead generation campaigns.