I saw a funny Dilbert comic that described the disconnect between what people say to their pets and what their pets actually hear. After a long conversation the dog only hears his name "Spot" while the cat doesn't even acknowledge its name. Here's how the same disconnect occurs during those sales/marketing status meetings:
What Marketing Says:
"In January we completed 2 email campaigns, 1 trade show and 3 press releases. Of the 715 leads generated, 22 are considered "sales ready" (based on our ranking system of 10 points or higher), 80 showed "high interest" and 146 ranked in the "somewhat interested" category. The remainder have an unknown status but will be included in the on-going email campaigns.
Starting in February we initiated a new marketing program that enables end-users to request budgetary pricing for our products. Since the system uses our current price list we were able to correlate the requests to a dollar amount. For the month of February we uncovered 51 "sales ready" leads for a total opportunitiy amount of $3,991,767."
What Sales Hears:
"In January blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ...
In February blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah ... $3,991,767."
VP Sales: Whoa, WHOA, uh, excuse me. What did you just say?
The lesson here is that if you want to get the Big Dog's attention you need to find a way to quantify hard sales opportunity numbers that they will understand. Marketing-ese does not translate.