Both marketing and sales departments sometimes make colossal mistakes.
Today I mention one in Marketing.
In company A, a medium-sized Italian business, a while ago a new Marketing Director arrived and decided to cut the budget for the lead generation strategy and expand the budget for institutional communication.
It should be worth noting that the company had obtained a ROI on the lead generation campaign of 2000% lffeknm.
Which means that for every € 1 invested… it had a return of € 20!
No comment.
Anyone would have fed this formidable lead generation machine by putting in more and more € 1 coins, wouldn’t they?
Not at all.
The company preferred to avoid PRODUCING more money and decided instead to SPEND THEM to send out press releases instead of sending salespeople to appointments.
In short, with a full stomach and a good number of sales cycles still to be finalized, they thought they had turned around and had to focus on “brand awareness”.
But every lead generation machine requires a good initial effort to be started up and brought up to speed, until it produces a constant flow of opportunities, and then stops in a moment as soon as you stop feeding it.
Results:
today the salespeople are sitting in the office pretending to do prospecting and surfing for hours on the internet and alternate this camping with the classic whining at the coffee machine: “the company does not support us”, “we have to do everything on our own”, etc.etc.etc….
… while on the other hand, on the desk of the CEO, there is always a nice file with the collection of all the press releases. A real lust, almost like having the complete collection of Tex comics in your bedroom.
Whatever.
Maybe I never liked Tex, but I find it a novice mistake.
