Typical conversation scenario between marketing and sales:
“Marketing team: We are generating leads but you sales guys are not closing
Sales team: You are delivering wasteful leads; that is why we are not selling”
Leads left behind! –
Wherein lays the gap? Are marketing and sales teams missing the mark?
One answer: Qualification criterion!
With each early-stage opportunity lost to strike a value-driven dialogue, you lose a chance to solidify relationships. The least preparation you have to get-in-touch with the right customer, the lesser the chances of validating data.
A disconnected approach between demand generated through marketing and sales telemarketing calls is enough to trip you up. To find a solution to this, enterprises wait long but no sooner they get disappointed with little real progress to drive business. It is not surprising that about 92% of companies suffer from lack of lead alignments to low conversion rates as per the study made by Corporate Visions. Knowing the right people to include in relationship management could have paved the way of successful customer relationships and more repeated business deals rather a low targeted and wasteful lead.
Relationships; not mere transactions – closing the conversation gap
It is not enough to simply deliver leads to sales team; delivering quality leads can strike the real deal. A lead churned through misappropriation of quality score can spell business revenue disaster! This is where true co-ordination and communication with sales team comes to play. Understanding customers type and specific lead quality is the lifeblood of true sales. A solid working relationship between marketing team and sales can only cultivate genuine interest of the prospect and in turn a real business opportunity. If sales and marketing focuses more on cultivating customer relationships, conversions will eventually follow! So employ the right messaging tools to transmit prospects data flow between the sales and marketing team seamlessly.
Up selling and cross selling opportunities are inversely related to sales. A sale focussed on customer relationships rather than transactions is more likely to generate more deals, more business relationships! If you make the most out of the data gathered through telemarketing, you drastically improve communication breakdown and boost sales.
Research your leads:
A sales person is client-focused, while marketing person is message-focused. Let the sales person capture customer’s reaction via marketing message to make fine adjustments that are routed back to marketing. Applying tacit knowledge to analyze, categorize, capture and re-distribute leads to the marketing team offers a true insight to the marketing message iteratively, eliminating the need of face-to-face interaction between marketing and sales. Measuring the right customer engagement score can rightly nail a sale and build profitable relationships between the two coordinating teams as well as with customers.
Reach prospects via new sources:
It is not enough to simply rely on the data collected through teleprospecting. Reach out to your prospects via multiple ways-send a tweet, LinkedIn mail, Facebook message or even a voicemail. Chances are you generate responses if not through one channel, obviously the other. Research LinkedIn company profiles, latest blog posts, look up to company websites, or tweet posts to know more about your target customer.
Include specific qualification criterion:
A general consensus about the qualification score to foster 1:1 sales and marketing co-ordination is important to drive profitable business results. Embark on a standard qualification criterion to be agreed upon and saved in a shared document by the sales and marketing team for future references. By and large, make periodical reviews of qualification criterions to ensure that quality score stay fresh, updated and most relevant to strike the right business deals.
Amy John is a marketing executive with over 12 years of experience in the execution of marketing and lead generation strategies.