Re-connecting the marketing funnel

It's B2B again.

What exactly is a quality lead, our clients always talk about them but rarely does it get defined. The sales perspective is something like a prospect who invites them to tender. But this is not perfect, the likes of IBM, HP, Vauxhall will more often than not be on the shortlist as part of a benchmarking exercise. Marketing would probably define a lead as anyone who has engaged with the organisation, either via an event or on line.

Clearly there is a disconnect and explains why sales often complain about marketing, sales understandably want easy sales.

We could 'settle' the argument is by linking the marketing database to the website to ad serving data and other on line marketing activity. Easier said than done. But in the meantime if anyone has a better definition or two of leads (that marketing and sales agree on) i would love to hear about it.