Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Joel,

No.

There is no universal number for this. Any number anyone gives you will be irrelevant to you because the number depends on many things which you have not included in your question, including your industry, the marketing you're doing, how effective that marketing is, how effective your sales team is at closing leads from marketing, whether they are new leads versus existing customers, and dozens of other factors. When it comes down to it, this number is specific to your situation.

For instance, for me, my leads come from networking and doing workshops - my only two marketing activities. So, asking me, my answer is 100% of leads come from marketing activities. I have a client in which 30% come from marketing activities - 70% are repeat customers. I have an associate for whom almost ALL his business is from sales activities. Retail activities will be somewhere in between.

Another big factor is what you consider sales activities and marketing activities. For instance, if you are retail and a customer comes into the store because of an ad in the paper and a sales person closes the sale - is that a "sales related sales" or "marketing?" I mentioned networking activities - is that marketing or sales? It's all in how you interpret it for your situation.

Two suggestions for you: Do a sample of your sales by customer purchase from the past month or quarter or half year or year or some time frame and categorize where the purchase come from. If you can't do that, make an estimate. Going forward, however, begin measuring! You are spending money on marketing and you should know your return on investment in each activity.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

Joel,

I never look at percent of sales in my industry (complex B2B technology sales) - only percent of leads. The sales process is too long and to look at % of sales can get very cumbersome.

For percent of leads, I look at it by product line and the companies market position. A leader in the market should have sales people that can generate 50% of their own leads from referral, network marketing and add-on sales. If the company is newer to the market, something in the neighborhood of 25% of leads from referrals is more reasonable.

I also find it helpful to work with sales leadership to help them make it very clear to their teams what is expected of them. Their leads should come from things like referrals and networking, not from traditional campaigns that marketing is better suited to do. If you don't make this clear, it may not be long before sales starts trying to run their own regional campaigns, sometimes asking for help from marketing, which defeats the purpose of the split.

Melissa