SaaStrophe Series: Where Are The Leads by Iris Dings, Sr. Content Manager @ Unmuted Artwork

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Mouseflow Podcast: Uncovering Website Analytics

SaaStrophe Series: Where Are The Leads by Iris Dings, Sr. Content Manager @ Unmuted

October 18, 2024 • Mouseflow

0:00 | 2:35

🚀 Key Takeaways:

Why defining leads together with sales is critical for marketing success
Why "more leads" isn’t always the answer—quality over quantity matters
Hear about the pitfalls of short-term lead generation strategies

In this piece, I dive into my experience as a marketing manager, where the demand for more leads became my personal nightmare. The sales team’s relentless call for leads—without a clear understanding of what a lead actually is—created constant pressure.

The recurring question was: “Where are the leads?” But rushing to create leads just for the sake of numbers doesn’t work. Becoming a qualified lead is a process, and not everyone who downloads content is ready to buy.

Tune in for a candid look at how marketers can shift their approach from chasing numbers to building real opportunities that convert.

Where Are The Leads? a story by Iris Dings

If a SaaS business wants to scale, chances are, they are growing their sales teams. More salespeople mean more revenue, right? Or so they think. But more salespeople also ask for more leads. We need more leads! Give us more leads! And as a content marketing leader, that turned into my personal horror.

Every year, there’s quite a bit of seasonality in the sales cycles. At the start of the year, our marketing plans were made, but after just a few months, when we were less than halfway through with the execution, the questions about generating more leads started piling up.

“Where are the leads?”—they kept demanding. And since the sales team has quite some authority across the entire organization, that puts plenty of pressure on the marketing department.

– Where are the leads?
– We’ve just started the campaign, be patient.
– We need more leads!
– It doesn’t work like that: Becoming a qualified lead is a journey, it doesn’t happen right after a campaign starts.

Since then, “Where are the leads” is a question I just can’t stand anymore. Why? Because you need to understand what a lead is and what it takes to become one. Simply launching another whitepaper is not going to bring in the right results. People who download information are not necessarily interested in buying from you. So, why should a salesperson call these people after downloading it?

The answer is—they shouldn’t! This person isn’t a lead yet!

I’ve heard “Where are the leads?” far too many times, and I still hear it occasionally. The worst part? You can’t just throw a quick fix at it. Because soon after, you’ll be hit with: “The quality of these leads is horrible.”

My learning? As a marketer, you need to work together with sales to define what a lead is and what stages it goes through. And while you’re at it, you have to stick to a plan that builds real potential, not just short-term numbers. The most successful marketing programs are a mix of proven playbooks and small, strategic experiments. That way, you’re creating long-term results, instead of chasing quick MQLs that never convert into real opportunities.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll stop hearing the heart-wrenching wail: “Where are the leads?”