My colleague, Shepherd Smith posted awhile ago about the importance of aligning sales and Marketing’s definition of “what is a lead”.  I agree that too often these definitions have diverged without the other team realizing that each are using different definitions. Of course this can really heighten the divide that commonly exists between Sales and Marketing. Companies that are using a Marketing Automation platform know that aligning marketing and sales is a necessary first step to ensure that the pipeline is generating what everyone agrees are “better leads”.

MarketingSherpa gave a great summary of how to best achieve this alignment and ultimately generate and close more leads:

1. Get commitment from the top. The marketing and sales teams need to communicate, and it needs to start from the CMO and CSO. Says Fernandez. “The VP of Sales and VP of Marketing should go get a beer together.”
2. Model the marketing/sales funnel. An integrated revenue funnel helps each team understand what the other team is doing, and how their actions impact revenue.
3. Develop a common vocabulary. A common marketing/sales funnel also provides common language and metrics, which is especially important for defining when a lead is qualified and/or ready to be handed over to sales.
4. Look for operational disconnects. Make sure that goals, initiatives, and promotions are aligned by developing plans jointly and meeting monthly or at least quarterly.
5. Test key metrics to track. Trying to tackle all sales-marketing alignment issues at once is too daunting, so start by tracking two important metrics, such as lead volume and lead quality. This is a great way to start the dialog.
6. Create a closed-loop reporting process. Make sure marketing has a way to follow-up with sales to see how well leads are performing. This can help tune lead gen efforts, and is an important way to take qualified prospects that are not yet sales ready and recycle them back into marketing.
7. Share accountability between the teams. Marketing is a very measurable process, but the results are head to measure; it’s easy to measure Sales outcomes but Sales activity is hard to measure. As a result, compensation and rewards tend to be very different, which creates further problems. The better your marketing accountability and ability to measure marketing’s impact on the bottom line, the easier it is to bridge this gap

With so many disruptive, addictive technologies such as Email, IM, RSS and Cell Phones prospects are distracted like never before—and chances are, so are you!

So what can you do?

Key Tip: If you provide something of value to prospects, they will give you their respect, loyalty, time AND ultimately their business.

Consider the facts. Studies show that execs value Business Briefings (aka White Papers) most—more than case studies, product literature, articles from industry journalists, analyst reports, company websites, webcasts, blogs, online video and podcasts.

One thing is for sure – senior-most executives hate to be sold.  They want to be in control and make their own decisions to buy.  They view themselves as thought leaders and and love to have a “trusted advisor” (like you) nearby that they can count. So if you give away some of that proprietary, hard-earned insight in the form of a business briefing or ebook, you actually can propel yourself to a position of thought leader/trusted advisor and attract opportunity.  This may seem counterintuitive but it works.

Of course there is a right way and a wrong way to do this…  What’s the right way?  Give your readers plenty of sample content before they are asked to trade their personal contact information for access.  So many web sites ask for detailed information and lose valuable leads.  Make this an interactive, engaging process that gives more value than you get and they will come in droves.

This idea comes from the video game market. Remember playing video game demos that provided you access to the first two levels?  The same strategy can be applied to free business briefings.  When your registration form finally appears, this is the prime opportunity to ask readers if they want to join your email opt-in list, in addition to receiving the briefing.  Try it and you’ll see.

Its a safe bet that many companies have made New Year’s resolutions to increase revenue streams as so many companies, large and small were hard hit in 2009. While becoming leaner and meaner as some companies have done can help reduce expenses, there are other strategies that can be employed. Namely being smarter when it comes to sales.

If you’ve been asking yourself  “what can I do to get leads flowing again? Here are five areas where businesses can look to improve their sales potential:

1. Poor Lead Stewardship. The number one reason sales are lost is that they are forgotten. Many companies have poor systems, or no systems in place for tracking leads from the moment they are aware of them to the time a customer deal closes. Take a hard look at the “lead leakage” in your business, adopt or modify your existing process, and you’ll see sales climb quickly.

2. Are you Listening?  Any successful salesperson knows that “Sales is a transfer of enthusiasm.” You must be enthusiastic about what you are selling, but you have to also keep your focus on the customer’s needs. Make sure you are asking focused questions about their business process, their sales needs, what’s working, what isn’t and how you can help them achieve their goals. Be relentless, less ”selling” and more listening! IMHO, buyers will choose the company that they feel hears and understands their pain points and has a solution that seems designed just for them! (After all, each of us want to be heard; this simple shift can bring some profoundly positive results.)

3. Lack of Urgency.  Hand in hand with the previous point, is how well you are managing urgency. You’ve probably heard many times: The most important question in sales is not “Why should I buy your product or service?” but “Why should I buy your product or service NOW?”  Buyers are more cautious than ever, so coming up with compelling reasons why they shouldn’t delay making a commitment to your products/services is very important for success. 

4. Craft a new elevator pitch. The beginning of any dialogue often starts with: “So, what is it that you do?” Even experienced, savvy sales people may use a list of bullet points to explain what they do. What they’re not getting is that your prospects don’t care about what you can do. They really only care what you can do for them to solve their problems. Tell them why you are the best one to provide this solution. Its time well spent to understand exactly what your core value is to your customers and develop the strongest focused messaging to communicate this effectively.

5. Pay for Performance Marketing. Shameless plug : True Influence has developed LeadPacs to help companies who don’t have the time, resources or money for in-house multichannel marketing campaigns but need more warm leads for Sales. Pay-for-performance leads mean you get exactly who you want, leads scored on the behavior you specify. Once you provide the content to us, we launch a campaign on your behalf and immediately deliver the results to your Sales Team!

Wishing everyone a Happy and PROSPEROUS New Year!

As an accomplished eMarketer, you may already have sophisticated Marketing and SalesForce.com Automation systems in place. You may also be using an analytics module to provide  in-depth stats by the minute, as well as a set of Automated Marketing Programs  to qualify, score and funnel Leads to your Sales system. With all of this in place, you will have a steady volume of prospects flowing through your system and a lead conversion rate on par with industry average.

However,  to add the ‘Customer Driven’ dimension to your automated marketing programs, one must design programs that elicit targeted actionable feedback from your prospects, leads, customers and marketing programs that are ‘Agile’ enough to adapt themselves based on customer feedback.

The key here is to ask the right questions to the right person. If you already have a lead/prospect/customer scoring mechanism built into your marketing programs, you could use the score to determine whom to ask what.

For Example:  When you lose a lead after he was assigned to a sales executive, you could send a satisfaction survey email asking to rate the salesperson. This feedback could be used by your agile marketing program to route your hottest (highest scoring) leads to one of your top salespeople in the future.

If one of your existing key customers gives you a very high overall rating, your agile marketing program would take note of this and send out an email asking for references or perhaps send another email to try and crosssell/upsell more products.

When reviewing automated marketing programs make sure you’re also evaluating just how agile and customer driven they truly are.

Social Media is discussed in marketing circles but largely misunderstood. I thought this was an interesting YouTube post from Adam Taha discussing the basics of social networking and how it can generate leads for sales. Take a look.

Everyone is talking about Lead Gen, Marketing Automation and the like. What’s all the hubbub about? Well, stated simply, its because all businesses need to capture leads to keep the funnel to sales full and many are searching for the right lead generation software to help them accomplish this goal.