Lead generation has been ranked the top global sales and marketing challenge facing 58 per cent of companies, according to The Black Report published by 360 Leads.
The research revealed that although 78.5 per cent of brands have engaged in lead generation programmes over the past 12 months, only 17.3 per cent are meeting their sales lead generation targets.
However, the marketing department views their lead generation activities as 35 per cent more successful than sales does.
While sales believe lead generation remains an issue because of poor marketing channel selection, marketing believes it comes down to data list quality.
Marketing and sales also have differing opinions when it comes to their marketing channel of choice. Sales departments prefer outbound telemarketing as the channel of choice (57.1 per cent higher than marketing), while marketing selected digital (65.6 per cent higher than sales).
Sales professionals believed lead nurturing activity is missed 5.7 per cent of the time, while marketing said lead nurturing was lacking 17.3 per cent of the time.
Meanwhile, the report showed the most successful sales lead generators come from financial services, business and professional services and technology brands; with companies who communicate three or more times with sales prospects being 2.4 times more likely to meet targets.
Stuart Lewis, president and CEO at global sales lead generation company 360 Leads, commented: “There is a major disconnect between sales and marketing departments’ points of view on lead generation. This disconnect contributes significantly to the lack of results, and consequently overall business performance.”