I'm of the opinion that:
- Give sales the ability to unqualify if it's clearly not a lead (account doesn't make sense, job title doesn't look good, contact info is incorrect & not able to be dug up).
- Change up mediums of contact (Priorities are likely: email, then phone, then social, then other...).
- 7 or more touches for anything that appears to merit a conversation.
- Give the sales rep the ability to put the lead into a nurture program (instead of unqualify).
The three touches rule is too lazy. I only encouraged it as a limit above when the rep is going in cold because the context was around avoiding anger. Give your sales rep some flexibility and he or she will know what to do. Measure them on total touches, not touches per lead. Make sure they respect the cost and context of each lead.
Note that the timing rule still applies with the seven touches... if the first three can come quick (within the first week). The next four or more can be interspersed, change the length of message over the next week-3 months. Eventually you have to clear the tele-reps queue of old campaigns.
I have a lead status called 'sexy-lead, keep trying' for ones that I never want to give back to marketing. The logic here is that they deserve my personal attention. In my mind their use case might be a bit specific and I want to communicate it effectively and don't trust our segmentation. Not sure if this is a best practice as it limits the number of people working on the lead - they are only receiving my dumb sales-y messaging .