Marketing spends a lot of effort sponsoring events, creating content, nurturing and qualifying leads. Then we throw them over the fence to sales, where many don’t convert to customers. Why? Do they get disqualified as not warm enough? Who really knows?
You’re all skilled professionals, doing your best. But that traditional wall between sales and marketing is blocking more than just visibility: it’s preventing both teams from converting efforts to revenue.
Marketing and sales are a continuum. Failures and successes are on both of you. To create a stronger partnership and drive results, marketing can lead the rapprochement, supported by technology.
Start with these 3 foundational steps.
Leak-proof your sales funnel
Marketing-to-sales funnel plumbing is notoriously leaky. Leads may get duplicated, stamped incorrectly, or never get through. In our constant time crunch, we patch them up and push them over. But leaks will only multiply over time. Throwing money at the problem by putting in a new system will often only magnify them. Spend some focused time to leak-proof the plumbing. Then, when you layer on new stuff like automation or ABM, your process is clean.
Set up your lead lifecycle
Both marketing and sales should be able to easily track the full lifecycle of a lead. Find your ideal lifecycle by reverse-engineering a sale or two to analyze what customers looked like in the funnel. Work together to develop the best flow. Is MQL the right trigger for transfer to sales? Or would Opportunity work better? Harmonize the transition from automated nurture to personal touch. Timestamp leads so you know how fast they’re moving. If good leads are stuck in sales, find a way (with the help of a platform like Sendoso) to help book a meeting. Show sales that recycling leads can pay off. Consider putting an SDR on the marketing team, merging marketing opps and revenue opps into one team, or setting up a weekly call with demand gen and sales to discuss leads. A more unified lead flow lets you find and fix bottlenecks and breakdowns, and streamline for an eventual move to ABM.
Use KPIS to build trust around goals
Does sales define an MQL the same way marketing does? Is marketing’s expectation of Speed-to-Lead (follow-up within an hour) achievable in sales? Follow-up Percentage, Disqualification Percentage: Are you all on the same page? You may not be able to share the same system, but at least establish a shared dashboard, a common definition of KPIs, and unified goals that support each other.
Addressing pain points, laying a common foundation and building a shared vision can have a huge impact. Less time wasted. More workplace happiness, trust and mutual respect. No more finger pointing. Faster and more obvious ROI campaigns and tech. By tightening up the partnership through MarTech, you can not only build more complicated campaigns and playbooks together, but also proudly tell the story of how marketing and sales, as a single team, is bringing success to the business.
To learn more on how to conquer the biggest CMO challenges of 2022, download our E-book.
