Start at the beginning: Who is our ideal client?
Generally, Marketing and Sales have different objectives: and Sales is thinking of a different person than Marketing is.
When we say LEAD, what do you think of?
Most salespeople think of a decision maker from a target company who has a need that your product or service solves, and who is interested in having a conversation to talk about it.
For marketing professionals, on the other hand, a lead is a person from a target company country area code philippines who has shown interest in one of the campaigns.
What to do about it? Read more about Smarketing in this note we published some time ago>>
Hence the importance of defining TOGETHER who the ideal client of our business is. Yes, Marketing and Sales (or the smarketing team) should sit down at the same table to think before launching a new campaign or strategy. This is the starting point, and in the rush of day-to-day life, we tend to overlook it. Not doing so generates a long chain of disagreements that ends up affecting the effectiveness of the areas, the efficiency of the company and the growth of the business.
Marketing's goal should always be to get Sales to spend their time talking to qualified people who are ready to buy because they've already discovered that our product or service is perfect for solving their needs. This is the level of leads that Marketing should pass on: SQLs.
A B2B inbound marketing strategy will greatly help to nurture and qualify leads, with a content plan that accompanies the prospect in the different stages of the purchasing process.
If you still don't know what methods to use to qualify leads in consultative sales, this note will help you >>
To do this, the company must structure, standardize and document its marketing and sales processes: how both areas converge, at what points they meet and when they work separately, at what moments they present joint results, what KPIs or metrics will be evaluated for which positions, etc.
In addition, automation will be key, not only to “cultivate” leads, but also to help sellers avoid wasting their time on repetitive administration and information management tasks: migrating from spreadsheets to a CRM that adapts to the needs of the business (it is not necessary to buy the most expensive one to start seeing results) and that allows standardizing and automating the lead and customer follow-up processes at different stages of the life cycle (again, Marketing + Sales).
So, if we want to improve business results, we must align sales and marketing teams under common objectives, standardizing processes, unifying platforms, jointly defining service agreements and monitoring metrics that allow for the implementation of continuous improvement actions.