We all know how important it is to have a strong alignment between sales and marketing teams.But what you are really doing so both teams have lined up? Not always so easy to achieve that alignment.
The alignment between marketing and sales is a reality.
In terms of marketing
After all, if you go to close sales effectively and generate more business for your company, you’ll need to make sure your marketing team not only provide your sales team Leads quality, but they are also providing the information they need to have the best chance to convert those leads into customers.
In terms of sales
Moreover, it is also important to close the sales cycle, ie to get your sales report to marketing team about the quality of leads that have been generated – and what happened to them – in order to generate better able to generate high quality Leads.
The key to maintaining a happy sales team is communication. Bidirectional communication, by the way.
So if you’re only generating leads and strips to your sales team to see what sells, I guarantee you is not generating as many high quality leads, or as much income.
Okay, so I have to communicate with my sales team to improve the efficiency of our equipment. But what am I supposed to talk to them? What information should I be giving them, and what you should be getting from them in return?
Here are 10 ways your team must communicate to keep both their sales teams and aligned, effective and happy marketing.
Key pieces of information that should be communicated to Sales Marketing
What are the marketing objectives?
In order to prepare and measure success, it is essential to inform your sales marketing goals for the month. Your sales team needs to know what kind of volume and quality of Leads expected, so they can prepare accordingly.
On the other hand, if they know you’re thinking to increase the number of Leads by 20% next month, have the flexibility to be more selective with the leads that work so that they can devote their time to those who believe they have better potential closure.
What content are you using to generate Leads?
You would think the lead generation strategies are really important only to be understood by the members of the marketing team and is actually extremely necessary that sales representatives know where they are coming to close them as clients effectively.
If someone came to your website and download a piece of your content such as a specific ebook. As you have never spoken to this person before, and you’re about to try to convince them that your product or service will benefit them, I need to get as much information about these leads, right? More specifically, you know that this person expressed any interest in your content. So would not it be helpful to know what this person was interested in learning more about?
What other information do you have of leads?
In that sense, any useful information you have about the leads should be passed to your sales team – not only the content downloaded for reading. The easiest way to get this information is through forms capture leads. In other words, before your visitors download your content, ask them to provide some information about themselves. How big is the company? Is B2B or B2C? What is your role in the company?
This provides a good starting point for identifying the profile of the lead, at all crucial for understanding the purpose of running a well-oriented sales approach factors.
Which team is responsible for managing leads at each stage?
Leads nutrition is an essential part of the buying cycle, allowing marketers to maintain communication with leads in two situations: when they have not talked to a sales representative and are not yet ready to do so, and when the lead he has talked to a sales rep, but is not yet ready to buy.
In both cases, it is important to nurture these quality leads rather than just throw them away because they are not ready to buy right this second. In fact, according to Market2Lead, nurtured leads have a sales cycle 23% shorter.
Now, given that these leads may be at different points in the buying cycle, have different stages of nutrition – and given that your sales team works some but not others – is necessary to make clear to your sales team what criteria determined for contact which lead generated.
The creation of an agreement that clarifies what equipment is responsible for a given lead at every stage of your life cycle will help to ensure that all leads are being served.
How are you nurturing your Leads?
In the same vein, it is important that your sales team knows more than the marketing is nourishing. You should also make sure they have some concept of the strategy behind nutrition being made. Are you sending educational content? Are you on a more personal way to those who have questions along the way? Do you are submitting more information about your product (s) / service (s) or company?
It is important that the sales team have a general understanding of what you’re doing and it will give them a clearer understanding of how they have been communicated to these leads and how much they know about your business – before they get on the phone with them to start the sales conversation.
Key pieces of information that must be communicated to sales Marketing phone
How is the overall quality of leads
Your sales team should be able to provide a clear picture of the overall quality of the leads that marketing sends each month. This month, for example, there was a high volume of leads that they had no interest in your product? Did the representatives to fight to try to connect with them in the first place?
It’s pretty easy to keep track of the number of contacts it is generating, but you really need feedback from sales to understand the quality of the leads that are submitting. As a result, you will be better equipped to detect the source of high or low quality leads so you can apply the lessons learned in your marketing efforts in the future.
What sources and content topics generate the best Leads?
If you are creating a variety of offers to generate leads, your sales representatives should work leads that have become each of these different offers. Given that what content have proven to generate greater interest in a particular topic, and tend to be higher quality leads generated? What topics are better or worse play, not only in terms of number of downloads, but also in terms of quality leads?
What are your leads are saying about your content?
Are your sales reps using content leads that have been downloaded to start the conversation with them? If so, chances are that they will get their own leads some feedback on these deals! Have enjoyed reading the leads? Did you learn anything valuable? Maybe they told the representative that the offer was not what I had expected, and found that the content is useful. It is useful for you to know what you can improve your content marketing information to go on.
How many leads are connecting and closing?
It is also important to be informed about the performance of the sales team, and know what their management metrics are. Of the leads that you’re sending to them, how many are able to connect? Of the leads that connect, how many agree have more depth conversation sales, whether a product demonstration or something else? Of those who agree to a sales talk, how many become customers?
Knowing these parameters will help you understand where the greatest challenges of your sales are, and allows you to lend a hand when needed.
How else can marketing help sales?
What other opportunity areas have the members of your sales team to help Marketing to step in and help? How can nourish or not a certain group of leads more aggressively?
Maybe you’re missing a segment of leads that could benefit from a campaign specific nutrition or some other type of marketing influence. Or is it possible that your sales reps just want a better understanding of what you are doing again in marketing to help direct your conversations better. Just keep communication flowing, and remain open to suggestions and new ideas.
According Genius.com, 66% of buyers indicate that “consistent and relevant communication provided by both organizations sales and marketing” is a key influence in choosing a solution provider.
Marketing people, make sure you’re communicating with your leads properly. But these efforts have significant effect on the final result, communication should start with your sales team.
So we recommend you join the sales and marketing and get the best possible alignment to start generating more leads and higher quality … to achieve higher revenues.
