Business to Business lead generation is a straightforward process, but since it depends on both the sales and marketing departments working together as a team to be successful, it needs a high degree of cooperation from everyone involved.

Here are the top 7 things the sales & marketing teams must do to ensure success:

1.) Define what a lead is... make sure there's a consensus with your sales & marketing teams what this is. An example of this might be: (1) Acknowledgement of need (2) Intent to purchase in the next 6 months (3) Dissatisfaction with current supplier. And, make sure there's a consensus on what the lead qualification process is...

2.) Define the internal lead qualification process... what things are 'must-haves' for a contact to become a hot, closable, qualified lead... for example: "All leads generated from a tradeshow need to be filtered by an internal telesales qualifier first... to weed out information-seekers from real prospective buyers.

3.) Pass only qualified leads to sales team... no matter what. Leads that are not qualified properly waste everyone's time, and decrease the confidence in your ability to deliver.

4.) Get regular feedback from your sales team on target companies, and on your quality of the leads you're sending over. What's working? What's not working?

5.) Get feedback from the field to co-develop campaigns... are there changes in the industry that would make some targets better than others? Are there some products that should be emphasized over others?

6.) Measure ROI... you need to establish metrics... connect leads to sales with a lead tracking tool administered by your top sales operations person... whether that be the VP of Sales & Marketing, or the President.

7.) Meet frequently to to discuss the results with the sales team... these don't have to be long meetings, but they're imperative to keep the sales lead generation program on track, and your revenues and profits up.

Market One offers an unparalleled suite of sales-building tools—backed up by a full-service integrated direct marketing agency—to help you achieve your objectives and to help your company to increase its sales and profits.