By Chris Bucholtz

Yesterday, we held a webinar called “5 Foolproof Ways to Generate More Leads Using CRM” featuring Craig Rosenberg, who from time to time drops in to this blog and shares his wisdom. The polls we took during the webinar were extremely interesting – they suggest that the gap between marketing and sales is very large, still – and perhaps fatally large at some companies.

When we asked “What percentage of your leads come from your CRM data?” a whopping 62.7 percent of respondents reported that NONE of their leads came from their CRM systems. That’s right – almost two-thirds of the people who participated in the poll don’t get leads from their CRM systems. Yet. The fact that they were there to attend the webinar hints that they are at least thinking about it.

Our next poll asked whether the audience was using CRM for lead generation. About a third – 29.5 percent – said yes. Another 21.9 percent said no, but they had plans in the works to do so. An amazing – AMAZING! – 48.6 percent said they weren’t using CRM for lead generation and had yet to develop a plan to do so.

Coincidentally, another study by CRM software provider Infusionsoft, which targets the small business market, showed that 65 percent of small business owners cite an inability to consistently and efficiently follow up with leads as the top concern.  

Infusionsoft’s release on this also included this list (good grief, more lists!) of the Top 10 marketing-related frustrations the 2008 U.S. Small Business Marketing Frustration Survey:

1. Too difficult to follow up with cold, warm and lukewarm leads consistently and efficiently

2. Can’t properly track and manage prospects and customers

3. Need to integrate online and offline marketing efforts

4. Poor email deliverability

5. Too much manual grunt work in the sales and marketing process, no automation

6. Can’t track sales activity

7. Lack of centralization, too many different programs and systems

8. Too costly to maintain servers and IT staff 
9. Too difficult to manually manage multichannel campaigns
10. One-dimensional marketing

Is it just me, or are there gigantic, head-slappingly obvious opportunities suggested by this data for CRM consultants and vendors, especially in the SMB space? And do those opportunities remain because customer don’t have the bandwidth to go out and compare solutions, or because solution providers don’t have the marketing wherewithal to reach these customers?