Contradicting opinions on who generates leads

There are studies out there telling us that in the web 2.0 world up to 90 % of purchases today start with an internet search.

This searches will end on someones landing page and can be interpreted as a lead generated by unaddressed attraction. As landing pages are usually owned by the marketing department of the respective organization, these leads can therefore be considered to be generated by marketing.

In contrast to this, CSO Insights in their Sales Performance Optimization – 2009 Survey and Analyzes, report that about 52% of the leads salespeople are working on, are self generated by the salespeople. This figure actually has risen over recent years. In 2006 only 40% of the leads were self generated.

How can we reconcile these two views?

One possible explanation for this discrepancy could be that a shift has already occurred how field sales forces are used. They might increasingly be used only for offerings where the customer needs help early on to understand that there is a problem and how it could be solved. It seems plausible that for this scenario, generating leads directly by the sales force might be more effective. The majority of respondents to the CSO Insights study operate in B2B selling environment , whereas it is not so clear whether the studies claiming the percentage of buying cycles started with an internet search are making this distinction between B2C and B2B selling.This could be another reason for the discrepancy of the two trends.

You can read here, enableyoursales why I think the question is relevant.