Sales Lead Utilization with Distribution Partners in B2B : Creating an Analytical Model for Sales Lead Assessment

Abstract

In the recent years the focus in sales management, and in management overall, has started to lean more and more to knowledge gained from analyzing data. Knowledge is refined in processes supported by different IT-systems that also make the knowledge sharing more transparent. At the same time the increasing competition forces companies to use creative methods and utilize automatization in marketing and generating sales leads. Every new sales lead is an opportunity to gain a new customer and close a deal but handling them also takes resources that might not be available as much as needed. To make the process more efficient and ensure the correct resource allocation organizations need to have tools to analyze the value in their sales leads already from the early stages of the process. This ensures that the value in the most potential leads is maximized but also provides feedback for marketing actions and creates knowledge to improve the allocation and ROI.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate sales leads, models to analyze them better and increase the efficiency in the processes related to lead management. The thesis is conducted for a case company that acts through a global distributor network which limits the context of the research to focus closely on the specialties the distributor partner co-operation creates to the subject. The goal is to create an analytical model for the case company to assess the value in their sales leads and the success points in the process. The empirical part of the research is conducted with two research methods, starting with an online questionary to understand the case company’s sales reps’ view of the current situation and the value of leads they handle. The second part is a data analysis for the case company’s CRM data, with analyses about the reporting practices and the current conversion rate.

The results indicated that the case company has challenges in measuring the actual value they gain from sales leads, caused by the lack of systematic reporting and knowledge sharing. The freedom and responsibility given to each sales rep to own their own market area proved to be an important factor in succeeding in the relationships with distributor partners and building the trust to ensure the success also in the sales lead process. To make the process more efficient and to improve the analysis of the lead quality and overall value, this research introduced a model to prioritize the leads and determine the conversion rate. The result proposed the case company to start splitting their leads into three categories based on their potential. For each category, some guidelines were set for the lead handling. In the proposed model, the wed leads with least potential would be set as COLD Leads and their handling would be done in the most efficient way with ready-made email templates. The most potential leads would be called HOT Leads and more resources allocated to their handling. With HOT Leads the follow-up would be closer, and feed- back reported to the CRM-system in the same way throughout the sales team. As the whole process would be centered in the CRM-system, the sales path and all information would now be easily accessible for all relevant parties. For the conversion rate determination, certain limitations needed to be accepted but with those a calculation model was introduced as a standardized way to follow the success of the process and calculate the conversion rate and the revenue gained from web leads.

This research was conducted in a close relationship with the case company, and all the results might not be repeatable as such in other contexts. The research however does introduce interesting details and examples of sales lead analysis especially in the distributor context which proved to be included in only a limited number of previous publications. For the future research opportunities lay also in the challenges of combining the IT-systems and the needed human work into a one efficiently working process.