An organisation is made up of many roles including operations managers, strategists, designers, writers and salespeople. But as we all know, the only metrics that matter are sales and ROI. If the sales team aren’t converting leads to new business and incoming revenue, then you can rest assured that the wider business won’t last long. So, is it right to place this colossal responsibility solely on the shoulders of the sales team? Of course not. Every other role in an organisation is tasked with providing their salespeople with the best leads and sales opportunity.
B2B organisations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth, and 27% faster three-year profit growth - typeacommunications
The obvious relationship which helps breed revenue is the one between sales and marketing. Granted, the sales team are responsible for converting sales-ready leads to customers, but the marketing team are responsible for providing them with high-quality leads in the first place. In addition to this, it’s not simply enough for marketing to provide sales with a telephone number and say “this one’s ready for a call”. In today’s modern world of multi-channel marketing, the marketing team should be providing sales with a pack of information on each lead – including the content they’ve read, the communications they’ve received and the engagement they’ve had with the company.
But of course, these two teams working completely independently except for an exchange of documents will not help to generate the revenue either. The truth is, sales and marketing, along with strategists and planners need to be working together right from the very start of the campaign. What do sales consider to be a lead? What is their criteria for a hot lead? What are marketing planning to do to generate these leads? What content will they produce? What channels will they use to distribute it?
By allowing the sales team to be involved at an early stage, not only can the criteria for a hot lead be clarified between all parties, but sales can be informed about the information and content their leads may have seen prior to their sales call. This additional information can be used to guide the discussion and direct the lead towards a sale.
The bottom line is that although sales are responsible for converting leads to customers, there are many other members of staff who are involved in the lead generation process. The quality of their output will have a direct affect on the outcome of the sales team and therefore the wider business success. To learn more about aligning your sales and marketing process and increasing the number of opportunities you have to sell...
