Why Are My Sales Flat?
In Part 1 of this little snapshot of facts and figures we discussed the pillars of sales and marketing alignment and shared some facts and figures discussing the challenges of implementing a marketing automation platform. In Part 2 we discussed, from our vantage point of providing you with outsourced sales and marketing insights, why we feel like your leadership buy in is important to getting a sales process off the ground that sells to the buyer the way the buyer wants to buy.
As an outsourced sales and marketing company it’s our job to stay on top of the latest research data so you can stay focused on your business. What follows are some facts an figures about the current state of sales and marketing alignment:
According to Marketing Sherpas 2011 State of B2B Demand Generation report:
- 80% of leads that are turned over to sales people are raw leads.
- Of these leads 77% are long term leads (future opportunities) often ignored by sales people (which makes sense because its their job to transact this quarter).
- 80% of marketing leads consequentially wind up lost, ignored or discarded
- 73% of companies have no process for re-engaging or nurturing leads after sales. (e.g. no nurturing process).
What all this means is that about 80% of the leads marketing turns over to sales reps are not qualified. The buyers is not ready to buy yet. So this means that as much as 60% t0 70% of your companies potential revenue is being squandered.
What Can Your Company do to Turn this Around Immediately
With the right resources you don’t necessarily need an outsourced sales and marketing solution long term. In our White Paper Sell Faster and Sell Smarter 12 Tips you can implement immediately to turn around your B2B Demand Generation Team today we get into some detailed tactics. What follows below are some high level approaches we advocate exploring to start to shift your culture now.
Aligning Sales and Marketing – Best in Class companies know that both Sales and Marketing must get on the same page.
• A Mutual Definition of a “Lead” – agreed upon by Marketing and Sales
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) – Sales commits to timely follow up and closes the loop on every Marketing Generated Lead, agrees to reject unqualified leads back to marketing for nurturing
• Measure – Ongoing communication between both parties to evaluate progress toward goals and gaps in the process
Prompt Follow Up – Forrester says 46% of marketers at firms with mature lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads. As a sales outsourcing organization we staff sales account profilers and B2B lead profilers to support our own internal sales reps and your sales reps
Higher Conversion Rates –Gartner says when greater integration is accomplished between marketing and sales, conversion rates for leads (defined as earning the designation as qualified and/or committed to the sales pipeline) can increase by as much as 50%. We have our B2B lead profilers follow up with all leads to determine their readiness in a friendly and customer service oriented way.
Why is all this critical. Because bottom line you end up with More closed deals – CSO Insights says – Companies with mature, defined lead generation and management practices have 7% higher sales win rate.
Implement a Marketing Automation Platform and take some of the pressure off your sales team. You can nurture your not ready to buy customers and ensure that when they do you are the first in line. If you have not checked out what these platforms can do here is a quick overview from Pardot 5 Minute Overview of Marketing Automation. You can also start to leverage your content consumption to determine if the buyer is ready to buy by scoring that consumption, which a marketing automation platform allows you to do. Here is a quick sample.
To see if an outsourced sales and marketing solution or sales and marketing sales process consulting engagement may be able to help you accelerate your ability to take advantage of the current competitive advantages that technology and a quick cultural shift can provide please feel free to contact us for a quick consultative call.
We also invite you to visit our knowledge centers for more detailed tips:
Tactics to Lift or Launch B to B Demand Gen
New Product Launch Sales and Marketing Tactics
Digital Content Strategies to Give Marketing a “Sales Quota”
Sales Strategies for Tech, Software and SaaS Sales
Sales Strategies for the Professional Service Sale
