Avoiding Cascading Zipper Failures between Marketing and Sales

Posted by James Obermayer on Aug 21, 2012 7:33:00 AM

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James Obermayer, Executive Director and CEO of the Sales Lead Management Association and President of Sales Leakage Consulting is a regular guest blogger with ViewPoint.

Cascading Failure_iStock Photo

A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts, in which the failure of a part can trigger the failure of successive parts. Such a failure may happen in many types of systems, including power transmission, computer networking, finance, bridges, sales and marketing, (the last two are our words).

Cascading failures usually begin when one part of the system fails. When this happens, nearby nodes must then take up the slack for the failed component. This overloads these nodes, causing them to fail as well, prompting additional nodes to fail in a vicious cycle.i

Zipper Failure

In structures, some load-bearing components are subject to the “zipper effect,” where the failure of one component increases the load on other components and leads to partial or complete failure. This occurs in buildings (think Hyatt Regency Walkway Collapse—Kansas Cityii) when one structural member fails and one after another, braces, beams and flooring come down.

Hyatt Kansas City

Translate this into a company’s departments where the failure of one department causes a zipper effect of partial failure to make or sell a product. Of course what I am thinking about are the functions of sales and marketing.

Marketing creates demand, finding interested people and companies, and gives these leads to Sales; 75% of which are ignored. The structural catastrophe is Sales not following up THE SUPERMAJORITY OF SALES LEADS (60% or more) and salespeople failing to make their forecasts as a result.iii This lack of follow-up takes down Marketing, Manufacturing and all other related departments.

The “unzipping” is catastrophic simply because salespeople didn’t follow up on the inquiries (45% of which will lead to a purchase from someone else).

The contributing factors for the unzip:

  1. No business rule which mandates 100% follow-up.
  2. No business rule which mandates measuring the ROI for lead generation.
  3. No lead management system.
  4. No marketing automation system.

Keeping It Zipped

The cascading zipper effect can only be stopped by fixing the structural failure, in this case the ‘non-follow-up’ by Sales and the non-measurement of marketing successes.

This can be done several ways:

  1. By mandate as a company policy: all sales leads will be followed up or the responsible salesperson will be reprimanded and eventually terminated.
  2. All marketing lead generation programs will be measured for ROI.
  3. Sales Lead Management is a process that entails departmental teamwork, with the proper tools and leadership.
  4. Marketing automation will be used to provide strength to both Marketing and Sales so that neither reaches full failure.

Sales Lead Management AsideIn the instances where structural failure is found out in time, say in a building, a new structural element is used to shore up the weak area. In companies that have a lack of sales lead follow-up, they often buy CRM software products to shore up areas of non-compliance, which accomplishes very little. Put a tool in the hands of a fool and you still have a fool with an unusable tool. To solve follow-up problems use business rules, map out a system of sales lead management using CRM and marketing automation tools, which replaces some of the work the salespeople are supposed to do.

To stop a cascading zipper failure that victimizes the majority of companies:

CRM + Marketing Automation + Marketing ROI Measurement + 100% sales follow-up = Success


Wikipedia
ii Dr. Lee Lowery, Jr., P.E. grants anyone the right to use this work (photo) for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.
iii A simple majority is 50%, a supermajority is considered three fifths or two thirds.


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Topics: Sales Process, Marketing Strategy, Lead Management, Guest Blogs


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