The Challenge:  How To Focus On The Most Qualified Leads 

Sales reps are being burdened by more leads than they can effectively  follow up on and no way to separate the "hot leads" from those the need more nurturing.

The cost of pursuing unqualified sales leads is bigger than merely wasting time – you’re also missing out on better sales opportunities.  By spending time chasing sales lead prematurely, you are missing out on the chance to talk to prospects who are much more likely to buy, and if you don't take the time to nurture them, then they may never become qualified to buy your product.

You know that to improve selling effectiveness, you need to be focused on getting the right information in the hands of buyers, at the right time. But getting sales and marketing on the same page can be difficult. Whose job is it to further qualify the leads?  What is a sales qualified lead? How should leads be followed up? How do we gain a better understanding of what is working?​

The Challenge:  How To Focus On The Most Qualified Leads 
33% of B2B marketers acknowledge that their biggest problem is serving the appropriate content to specific buyers when the time is right. - Forrester

The Solution:  Buyer-Focused Lead Development Processes 

​Better sales results are not always achieved by improving your conversion rates – increased sales often happen when you improve your upfront processes to better qualify the sales leads that are coming into your sales organization in the first place.

A Seamless Transition from Awareness to Decision

Aligning the buyer's decision making process with marketing and sales to deliver messages that will motivate and lead the buyer to understand your unique value.

Lots of B2B companies have only a very basic, inadequate process for accepting and handling inbound sales leads.  A mature lead handling process is based on clear criteria for passing marketing leads (MQLs) to sales, which include buyer readiness and buyer insights, and defining leads which become sales qualified leads (SQLs). 

The role of product marketing is to gain insight into the buyer’s need for information at every stage of the buying process and deliver relevant content to move them through the buying process. Marketing can leverage their understanding of the buyer's needs and establish an information gathering process to progressively profile leads based on the content they consume and the actions they take to further refine their understanding of buyer readiness and rank lead quality accordingly. 

With the right tools, marketing can provide knowledge to sales about each prospect’s unique needs, priorities and objections to enable sales to engage qualified leads with greater insight and understanding of the specific requirements to close the opportunity.​
 

 56% of B2B sales organizations do not make any effort to verify valid sales leads before passing the leads on to the sales team.
​-Hubspot

Buyer-Centric Marketing

Key Components of an Aligned Process

Goals​ and Roles
Establish lead generation and conversion goals and metrics.  Agree on Ideal customers, specific companies, stakeholders and buying processes.
Handoff Process
Select criteria and define pipeline for Marketing Qualified Leads and the process for delivering leads to sales. Lead scoring, nurturing process.
Communications Framework
An inventory of content resources for each buyer stage aligned with communication templates: call dialog prompters, emails, social posts, etc.
Sales Tools
Market analysis and competitive briefings, demos, battle-cards, success stories, presentations, whiteboards.
Automation and Reporting
​Implement technologies to nurture, categorize, and report on prospects. Agree on metrics and measurement.
Training and Feedback Loops
​​Test and track which information buyers rely on. Develop re-useable templates and processes to improve sales efficiency.

How Marketing And Sales Alignment Closes More Leads

Reduced Funnel Leakage

Technology marketing sees a higher prospect abandonment rate than most other industries – this is due to the greater investment required as well as the uncertainty and length involved in the buying process.  An aligned process can maintain tighter lead tracking and increased engagement.

Better Quality Leads

​Coordinated Marketing and Sales will allow a bidirectional flow of information so that Sales can return to Marketing leads that aren’t yet sales-ready and require more nurturing. This results in leads that are ultimately better qualified and reduces the risk of missed opportunities.

More Lead Follow Up

Aligning Sales and Marketing enables them to work together to ensure Marketing sends only the most valuable leads, and that Sales fully address them all so that none get wasted. This saves on time and resources previously wasted on dead-end leads, thereby increasing efficiency and ultimately revenue.

Improved Automation
 
When you have an agreed upon process for lead management,  you can then leverage modern sales and marketing 
​technology to perform routine tasks, provide alerts and real time buyer information, and track and measure the effectiveness of your efforts. 

Ongoing Improvement 

Once you know which leads are higher quality (making it further along the sales process), you you can keep improving your sales and marketing strategies, increasing sales velocity and lowering the cost of sales.

Sales Enablement Services

To start, we need to determine where your funnel has gaping holes. We look to make sure you're clearly defining your customer life-cycle stages (the step-by-step map through your funnel), then, we audit your funnel to find potential holes.  We'll look to identify where we can generate some quick wins and prioritize where we can have the greatest impact. 

We can then start building a sales enablement foundation that includes the roles and duties of marketing and sales, lead management (workflows, scoring, handoff), the mapping of messaging and content, the technology and tools to make your processes operate efficiently and effectively. 

Your organization will then have the foundation for a clear alignment of sales and marketing to provide more personalized and consistent experiences for customers, and realize increased sales and profits, much faster.

Sales Enablement Services ​The systematic process of aligning the selling process with the buying cycle, and then automating it with powerful technologies, enables sales organizations to improve results, faster than marketing alone.​

If you're committed to growing your business, we're here to help.
Let's improve your marketing and grow your sales pipeline.  

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