As marketers, one of our primary goals used to be (and still is to a different extent) to get as many leads as possible. It isn't that we weren't concerned with quality previously; we were simply measured on quantity. Today's marketer has a much heavier weight placed on quality and the fact of the matter is, not all leads are created equal. 

With the emergence of content marketing and social media marketing, lead numbers are growing significantly by the day, but are they truly sales ready leads?

Should a lead that simply visits your website hold the same value as a lead that attends one of your webcasts? Now you may determine further down the line that both leads are in fact at the same stage in the sales process but from the get go, you may want to prioritize how you handle leads as they come in. In order to keep the sales and marketing relationship in good standing, it is not in marketing's best interest to immediately turn every "lead" over to the sales team. 

Here are some things to keep in mind and use when prioritizing your leads in order to hand them over to your sales team and/or when continuing to nurture.

• What content did they view?
• Did they fill out a form?
• Did they view or attend a webcast?
• Did they attend a live event?
• What level of engagement have you had with them?
• What are their demographics?
  • Title
  • Location
  • Industry

This is just a sample but it gives you a starting point, to get you thinking about when to engage a sales person in the lead to sales process. You may want to sit down with both your sales and marketing teams and discuss the stages for your particular business. Decide what a "hot lead" is and how those are handled. Decide what leads are not sales ready and how to nurture them. This leads itself into marketing automation and how we can now set up automation to trigger subsequent action items, prior to handing them over to sales if it is decided they are in fact not quite ready.