Rethink: Marketing’s Handoff to Sales

Lead Generation can no longer be about numbers. It’s all about building relationships. But have your strategies caught up?

There is a deep-rooted issue with B2B marketing right now. And it can be called the lead generation problem. The leads that are handed off to sales are dipping in quality each year, and the bottom of the funnel remains unaffected.

To this effect, there is a lot of blame going on. Salespeople are quick to blame the problem on marketing for their delivery of leads.

Of course, outbound and inbound lead generation is in the hands of a company’s marketing department. Sales are there to close, and they can’t close an account that isn’t interested in the company offers.

This premature handing off of leads is the cause of many problems- major of which is the damage to a brand’s reputation and the waste of prospects’ and organizations’ time.

Buyers are becoming cautious. The unfulfilled promises by companies, lackluster solutions, and time-consuming communications have made the buying committee jaded.

And what about the saturation of the market? The SaaS buyer is overwhelmed with the options available to them, and still, the marketing industry continues on with its old tricks and plays.

These playbooks are failing and falling rapidly. We are in an age where lead generation is increasingly about the buyer.

It’s time to re-evaluate lead generation and the handoff to sales.

Part 1: What’s happening in marketing?

Marketing as an industry was based on reaching the ideal buyer. The ICP is crucial- that’s why the industry niched down and tried reaching its relevant prospect who would appreciate the communication and would “resonate” with it.

Marketing became a message to the buyer, and that message was, “We understand you; this is who we are, and this is what we can do for you.” This attitude worked for a while and then came the unmet promises.

Marketing messages promised efficiency to the buyer, but it was met with bloat. You don’t have to go far to see this bloat. Google your product’s solution or ask an AI what solutions are available in your domain- you will find thousands of results in the same category. All promising the same as you but in a different tone and language.

Can the buyer navigate all thousands of these messages? No, and thus, they became self-directed. They knew what they wanted, so why not do all the work themselves? It was easier and hassle-free.

To this response, marketing became more forceful. All organic interactions called MQLs were sent to sales, and then salespeople started contacting or calling them or both. This leads to failure.

But the good thing about low-quality MQLs is volume delivery. Out of 1000 leads, at least two were good. And that was acceptable for a while and justified the ROI.

And then organic reaches began to drop. So did MQLs. Outreach became the only way, and the buyers’ inbox was filled with marketing spam. And with AI making it easier to generate content, buyers have become more cautious and guarded.

The problem is deep-rooted.

Before we speak of the handoff to sales, we have to understand that the problem is a deep-rooted one.

Before generating leads and before lead scoring, the marketing team must define their ICP. Luckily, SaaS products are well-suited for this.

SaaS founders, product teams, and marketing teams know their ideal buyer. The common mistake here is bombarding prospects without understanding the overall context.

Marketing is about understanding the culture of the buyer. And this is a crucial step missed by many. Just because a product is amazing, it won’t translate to an understanding by the buyer. Think of all the messages you receive. How many do you give the time of your day?

Probably very few. But that one message that delights you or speaks to you is the one that receives your attention.

These messages are the ones that know the culture and the context you are in. When someone says lead gen is a problem, you think, “Hey, that’s right!”. That is, a marketer understands an existing problem.

The more of these conversations you have with your potential buyer, the more they will grow to trust you. However, it requires heavy research into the domain.

First and foremost, marketing must be looked at as a messenger. Not just a bottom-line driver of immediate growth.

As McKinsey says, “Marketing is a long-term investment of growth.”

and that is true. Marketing is a brand’s way of communicating values, diving deep into desires, and promising to make the desires come true.

Organizations, especially B2B, need to understand the value of brand-customer relationships because it is the basis of all lead-generation activities.

1. Friction
2. Touchpoints
3. Social Proofs
4. and everything crucial to marketing metrics is based on this relationship.

To build high-quality lead pipelines, the brand must: –

1. Using the right channel, founders must share their industry-specific perspectives and what they have learned.
2. The social-channel methodology should not be self-promotional but should include the problem you solve and why.
3. Your email outreach and newsletters will speak for your product, the problem you are solving, and how.
4. You can break these rules to see what works for you.

But that last step requires steeping into uncertainty, and today’s marketing teams are ill-prepared for it. There is too much reliance on data and very little on relationship-building and perspective-making.

Part 2: Sales’ role

Sales’ role is changing. Now that AI agents can set up meetings, and answer queries, score leads —everything that can be automated will be automated.

The low-level stuff of sales jobs will go to AI. That means more time to do things that build relationships with the prospects.

This includes researching and providing the real-time paint points of the buyer to the marketing team. Which is crucial in coming to an understanding of what constitutes a lead.

Yes, the definition of lead is vital to the handover. If there is no agreed-upon definition and qualification criteria, it will cause a disconnect between the leads that are qualified.

Sales must take responsibility for this.

Part 3: The Handoff

Last year (2024) saw many sales teams reporting a lack of high-quality leads. The issue seemed endemic to the B2B SaaS industry. Inbound leads were not up to the mark.

This must have caused tensions to increase between marketing and sales teams. Even if the sales teams do everything right, there’s no point if the transfer itself is defective. Marketing teams have gotten into the habit of delivering quantity over quality.

The saturation of the market is one reason that has been going around recently. There aren’t as many leads as there once were.

We’ve all seen the stat from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute— at any given time, the people in-market is as much as 5% and less.

But here’s the problem. CEOs, CFOs, and CSOs want numbers to reflect quickly- marketing must prove its ROI or face scrutiny.

And the cycle of trying to attract the buying pool of the 5% begins. Every competitor will be after them, reducing the chance of being discovered. With self-buying, especially, the chances have become slimmer.

Understanding self-buy

The buyer is self-directed. They know what they want and why they want it. They aren’t as much looking for a solution as they are confirming their choice.

These 5% that are so valuable to the B2B SaaS industry have already made up their mind before their buying journey has started. They’re just comparing other options with their initial and desired choice.

If you can sway the account in your favor, that is good. But looking at the numbers, only a few have been able to do so.

The solution is the 95%

Lead scoring is vital for the quality of leads received, and so is nurturing. But often, lead scoring is confused with the buyer’s behavior with the vendor.

For example, if a buyer downloaded a whitepaper and signed up for your webinar, that’s 20/20 points for interest.

If the buyer sits for your webinar, that’s a lead ready to buy.

Your sales team, primed and excited, calls them and gets shot down.

The buyer had already decided on the vendor. They just wanted to see if you offered anything else.

Because if they did like what you had to offer, there’s a good chance they might have asked to talk to a sales rep— that behavior is actually the one deserving a good score.

So, what? Do you stop inbound and outbound? No. Quite the opposite, you market to an audience of 95%.

95%, and the 5%

Lead scoring and nurturing should be divided into two segments: –

1. The watchers – 95%
2. And the takers- 5%.

CEOs must understand what the CMOs have known for years— marketing affects the bottom line first incrementally and then exponentially.

Both segments require different strategies. What marketing teams have to do here is to create separate rules and scoring systems for two distinct groups.

The watchers

1. For the watchers, the crux of the strategy should be relationship-building and understanding their needs. This is simple. By analyzing their behavior, you will be able to personalize the content.
2. Then, assigning scores to certain behaviors. The real creativity would be to understand what the data is saying. e.g., Can any behavior of theirs help you detect the timeline of their purchase?

These leads— are not quite MQL but rather a Qualified-for-Nurturing segment. With this list, you can start building authentic and meaningful relationships.

Buyers usually have a list of first preferences. With this strategy, be a part of that list.

The only thing a business needs to thrive at this point is patience.

The Takers

For the takers, the strategy calls for something more attention-grabbing. This requires a lot of trust in the product you are selling and an understanding of the buyers’ core problem.

The accounts you’re selling to will have a lot of bias. The committee set for decision-making has bias embedded in them. Each individual has their role and risks to mitigate.

There are two possible options:

1. All of them agree on a first-choice vendor
2. But everyone also has their first-choice vendor.

Both of these possibilities can be simultaneously true. The question: is your solution one of them?

To understand that and implement an effective ABM strategy— your solution will have to understand the explicit intent of the account and where it’s tending towards.

The question here is: What solution are they looking for, and the reason for doing so?

Here for the lead scores— you can implement a BANT-like questionnaire that answers questions like:-

1. Why is the prospect switching?
2. What are they looking for in possible solutions?
3. What are their business priorities?
4. What are the risks they are facing?

Of course, you must design these questions into their experience so that the answers come organically.

The next step would be to assign scores.

But what should the scoring system look like? As discussed, it can’t be one-dimensional— that is where marketing teams are losing prospects.

It should be behavioral but also be contextual.

1. Is the account proactive in its search?
2. What has been the response from the communication?
3. What conversations are the sales teams having with the stakeholders from the accounts?
4. Have they spoken to a stakeholder?
5. And so on.

This presents a very dynamic view of the buyer and helps you save time and cost.

The good thing about the takers is that they are time-waste averse.

You need to do that, too.

Collating the leads.

Once you have the scores down- it’s time for the handoff with meticulous detail.

Marketing teams are experts in drawing insights from data, and before the handover, they must lean into this, providing a detailed report of each lead scoring segment, why that score has been assigned, and what it means.

This level of transparency will help sales teams understand where the buyer stands and what level of communication they are prepared for.