1. What are the main hurdles standing in the way of effective demand generation?

What should
Claereboudt and Gruenewald do to overcome these hurdles and build the demand generation engine
they’re trying to build?

There is an ambiguous relationship between sales and marketing departments which results in the lost
sales with each department blaming the other one.

The main hurdles standing in the way of effective demand generation are:

1) Silos-
 Sales-Quality leads are less
 Marketing-Sales not able to convert
2) Incentives are aligned differently for both departments
 Sales- will try to maintain high conversion ratio thereby deliberately rejecting leads
Leads conversion ratio=(Sales generated from Leads/Total Leads)
 Marketing- mostly focus on brand building and lead generation and are least bothered
about the quality
3) Quality Leads-It is ambiguous because of varying time periods. Each department celebrates at
their convenience.
4) Only 20% of quota of sales is from leads generated by Marketing. The rest 80% is by Sales.
Therefore Sales team might actually be not giving due attention to leads from marketing and
might choose to purse on their own.
5) Developing new customers is tougher for the Sales team and there is no extra incentive for the
same which translates to lack of interest.
6) Marketing department does not have control after Marketing to Sales lead transfer process.
7) Conflicts:
Marketing Sales

Input of funnel Impressions Leads

Output of funnel Leads Closed Sales

Performance No. of Leads generated Conversion of Leads into

closed sales and meeting
revenue targets

Customer Focus Mostly on new customers or Mostly on existing customers

identifying new needs
Definition of Lead Potential customers may or Most likely to buy in near
may not buy future
Possibility of conflict:

 Sales team might not welcome the interferences as they felt that they “owned” several
processes in which marketing department could not add any value.
 Increased responsibility of Marketing.

Claereboudt and Gruenewald need to do the following ways in order to overcome these hurdles and
build the demand generation engine they’re trying to build:

 Joint Planning: Reach agreed upon targets for leads and Revenue
 Should plan in advance and keep the pipeline filled
 Marketing managers to participate in sales calls in order to resolve the conflicts
 Quarterly monitoring of progress
 Campaigns to be run throughout the year
 Ownership of accounts
 Upward and downward integration of metrics i.e. conversion of qualified leads.