What "Glengarry Glen Ross" Taught Me About Marketing

"These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. And to you they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They're for closers."

As a marketer, your sales team is one of your most important customers. If you don't believe me, watch “Glengarry Glen Ross,” to find out how important quality leads are. Acknowledging your sales team as a valued customer will provide important marketing insight. At a minimum, it will improve your your relationship with Sales.

Let’s say your sales team has a goal to generate $120,000 in revenue per month. Your products cost $1,000 each so your sales team needs to sell 120 products to accomplish their goal. As a marketer, how can you help them accomplish that goal?

Understand your sales organization and process.

How big is your sales team? What is the average sale price? What is the team’s close ratio (some salesmen are better than others)? How long is the average sales cycle?

Sales information, combined with what you know about their goals is illuminating. Let's work with some example numbers to calculate the number of actual leads you need per month. Let's say you find that Sales closes 50% of its leads:

120 (sales) ÷ .50 (50% close ratio) = 240 leads/month

Work backwards from there. Do you know your conversion rate? If so, you can easily calculate the number of prospects (assuming web-based traffic) you need per month to generate 240 leads:

240 (leads) ÷ .02 (conversion) = 12,000 visitors/month

Do you know your monthly traffic? Divide the number of leads needed by the amount of monthly traffic to get a conversion rate:

240 (leads) ÷ 12,000 (visitors) = .02 conversion rate/month

Where should you focus?

If you find that your conversion rate is less than 1 or 2 percent, focus on conversion. Improving conversion is going to be much easier than increasing your traffic so if your conversion rate is low, focus your efforts there. If you are between 2-5% conversion or higher, focus on traffic. The point is: know your sales numbers and how to calculate them to gain new insights and set new objectives.

Once you identify your sales team as a customer, it’s much easier to develop focused marketing budgets and campaigns, tailored to their specific needs. At a minimum, if the sales team doesn’t hit their goals, you can more easily identify the root cause.

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