In 2010, the district attorney’s office in Manhattan, NY created the Forensic Sciences/Cold Case Unit. This unit has reviewed more than 3,000 homicides to determine whether certain cases could be solved using state-of-the-art forensic testing techniques.

Can you use business forensics to solve your cold cases? Here is one example of how this could work.

Table 1 illustrates how many companies handle the outcome of marketing campaigns. Leads are generated and sent to the field while other outcomes, ranging from very strong potential (pipelines) to highly-qualified accounts, are generally ignored.

Table 2 illustrates how lists with multiple rounds of contact more than doubles results (from 40 leads to 84 leads) with no additional marketing expense and less than 75% of the cost to follow-up on the leads as compared to the first round of follow-up. 

As shown in Table 2, lists are just one of many processes that can be used to mine the maximum amount of value out of your marketing campaigns. Here is a list of all of the processes including a brief description:

No Lead Left Behind

It can take up to 10 – 12 touches to connect with even the most qualified leads. The example I always use is that it can take 6 – 8 telephone calls, emails and/or text messages to schedule dinner with a friend. Why, then, should you expect a prospect to talk to you after just one or two calls?

Eliminate Sales Lead Purgatory

Once leads have been accepted by sales, identify the cold cases (all leads that do not end up as closed-won) and audit them.

Marketing Lead Cost to Value Analysis

Many marketers are driven by a cost per lead mentality. The result is they are providing more bad leads to sales faster than ever before. For a real life example of this view Point C: From Chaos to Kickass and turn to page five.

To make this all work, you need to establish a judiciary branch within your company. The judiciary brand must include the most senior sales executive, the most senior marketing executive AND an additional, unbiased, C-level executive with the following responsibilities:

1. Establish a corporate wide definition of a qualified lead.
2. Establish an agreed upon process for sale’s proactive acceptance or rejection of leads.
3. Inspect EVERY INCIDENT of leads that are rejected or not accepted by sales. If the lead did not meet the agreed upon definition, fix marketing. If the lead did meet the agreed upon definition of a lead, then fix sales. 99% of the time a lead is not accepted or worked by sales is because of lack of effective follow-up. 
4. Inspect every incident where leads are accepted by sales but never reach a disposition down the funnel such as “sales qualified.”

Now go and do something about the cold cases your company is warehousing.

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