Marketing's objective is to pass on qualified leads to Sales. This means that marketing is responsible to nurture leads and attend to them until they are ready for the later stages of the pipeline. Leads that enquire about your products and brand need to be properly approached using the most fitting marketing messages. Responding to lead enquiries may include a thought leadership approach, webinars, emails and other ingenuities in providing enquiries with the right information.

The next stages of the pipeline process (once leads have enquired for more information), is to continue to push them down the pipeline using various content marketing strategies. At these stages, you need to provide only additional information to prospects. Educating them is a crucial process and creating a push can result in a lost opportunity. This is why it becomes essential that definitions and standards are set between marketing and Sales to work within the same parameters by identifying what a Sales-ready lead is.