The marketing and sales hand-off tends to be one of the key weaknesses that companies practicing inbound marketing face. We've seen this more and more in the past several months as we have started offering sales consulting services to complement our inbound marketing services, and when it is not addressed, it can have a major impact on the bottom of the funnel. When the bottom of your sales funnel isn't working well, it means you're not converting leads into customers. That's a big deal when you consider that bringing on new customers is THE WHOLE POINT of investing in inbound marketing.
Earlier this Spring, we saw this situation with a new client that we brought on. They had been practicing inbound marketing for a few years and had very healthy visitor growth and lead generation, but they weren't closing (or even really working) their inbound leads. As a result, this was their top priority when we began working together.
When our Director of Inbound Sales Enablement, John Shea, started working with them, one of the first things that he asked for was their sales process. I should note that he did NOT say "tell me what your sales process is." Instead, he said "give me a copy of your sales process." This distinction is important because a sales process needs to be something that is written down.
When he asked for their sales process, he received four different documents from four different people. This is a big red flag, because if everyone has a different process, then the company doesn't actually have a process - the individuals do.
Given this situation, John advised our client to have their sales team call every single lead that converts. This might seem excessive, but if you don't have a process or enough information to define a marketing qualified lead (MQL) or sales qualified lead (SQL), you can't effectively evaluate those inbound leads to accurately determine which are worth following up on and which are not.
I should point out that the plan is not for the client to always call every lead. This is just a short term strategy and the whole point is to use this as an opportunity to gather intelligence on their leads, learn why they converted, and begin to determine the signals that indicate whether (and when) they are sales ready.
Do You Have a Sales Process?
So think about this - do you have a sales process? A good sales process:
Is documented in writing
Is shared and used by every sales personn in the company (there is only one version that everyone is using)
Contains specific, well-defined, identifiable steps (or stages) that occur in sequential order
Is milestone-driven (meaning that you can't move from one stage to another unless the milestone or criteria has been met)
Is specific to your company, products/services, and industry.
Sales Process vs. Sales Methodology
Many people confuse having a sales process with having a sales methodology. Whereas a process is comprised of activities organized in stages, a methodology is the approach you use to move an opportunity from one stage within the process to another. Examples of methodologies include consultative selling or spin selling. Another key difference between a sales process and a sales methodology is that a process is specific to your company, but a methodology is universal and can be used by any company. If you have a sales methodology, you still need to have a sales process that is specific to your business.
Having a good process is important, but it can be difficult to implement. Often, sales people are reluctant to stick by a process if they feel it will prevent them from making a sale. A good example of this is when an opportunity doesn't meet the pre-defined milestones or criteria required to move to the next stage in the sales process. When this happens, many salespeople think they can ignore this and move the opportunity forward. The danger in doing this is that your sales people will spend too much time working deals that have a low probability of closing because they are unwilling to see the warning signs that the deal might not be closeable.
Setting Lead Expiration Dates
So assuming you have a process and you have leads coming in, how long should you work those leads before you feed them back to marketing? I recently read a great article in Biz Peake Journal (by the amazing Stephen Hall of Maryland Sales Training) that promoted the idea of having a lead expiration date, meaning a limit on how long leads can stay in the sales process before you stop working them and put them back into a marketing nurturing sequence.
I love this idea. The benefits of having a lead expiration date are that your sales team won't waste time working leads that aren't going to close, and instead, they'll uncover other leads that have a better probability of closing or they'll work deals that are already in the pipeline and are more qualified.
Having good data is key to being able to set lead expiration dates. The idea isn't to randomly set a date and then remove perfectly good opportunities from your pipeline. Instead, you should use what you already know about your leads to help you determine how long it typically takes to close a deal. Having a CRM (customer relationship management) system can help a lot with this, because a good CRM will enable you to run reports on the number of deals in your pipeline, how long deals typically stay at each stage in your sales process, and how long the whole process takes before a deal closes.
Here at Quintain, we don't currently have a lead expiration date policy in place, but I think we're going to test it out and see what happens. We use HubSpot CRM, so it should be easy to figure out the right timeframe and then track our deals as they move through the pipeline. As we do this, its going to be important for us to stick to our guns and not move leads forward in the sales process until they meet the pre-defined criteria we've set for each stage. In our case, this means not getting off the phone with a prospect until we've scheduled the next call or meeting.
Transferring Leads from Sales Back to Marketing
So this bring us full circle. When you have a good sales process and you know how to identify marketing and sales qualified leads, and you have a lead expiration date, it is much easier to determine when to kick leads back from marketing to sales. When you do this, you need to make sure to nurture those leads - and they can't be nurtured the way other leads are. You have to acknowledge that they've had some sales contact and build on that to push them further down the sales funnel.
Other Good Stuff
If you are interested in sales and marketing, don't miss HubSpot's INBOUND conference, which will take place September 8 to 11 in Boston at the Boston Convention Center. It is an amazing event that is really worth attending. This year, for the first time ever, Kathleen is going to be speaking at INBOUND. Her presentation will take place as part of the Partner Track and is about how we've been working with clients on engagements that combine inbound marketing and sales consulting. This is a really hot topic in the inbound marketing world and I'm proud to say that Quintain is at the forefront of agencies offering sales consulting services.
If you aren't already registered for INBOUND, do it now and use this discount code: XP67BVP. It is good until midnight on July 31 and will get you an all access pass for $925 (full price is $1,499). You can also set up a meeting with someone on our team while we're all up there in Boston. Just click here, fill out the form, and we'll give you a call to schedule something that is convenient for you.
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