Is Sales And Marketing The Perfect Partnership For A Successful Lead Generation?

It's the never ending battle between two related departments: sales vs. marketing. The latter running a campaign which generates tons and tons of leads, and then simply rests on its laurels. Sales, on the other hand, grumbles that none of those leads were interested in the product or not even qualified. Until various interests are associated, these 2 departments may never see eye to eye. Subsequently, there are actually some trouble-free steps that sales and marketing can do in order to make campaigns more efficient for all. Here are some tips.

1) Coordinate department metrics. A winning marketing campaign must be calculated not on the number of leads generated, but rather on the number of qualified leads were handed over to sales. Firms must also monitor the expected money or the percentage of income in the sales pipeline which resulted from a marketing campaign. The initial step in coordinating or aligning these two departments is for leadership to lay out KPIs (key performance indicators) based on shared success. This can help make sure that each one stays focused. During lead nurturing, it's advantageous to monitor the different "marketing touches" a prospect has acquired to gauge which campaigns aid in pursuing a new lead from an interested party to a genuine sales opportunity.

2) Sit down and discuss about it. Once the objective—accomplishing the new cross-department goals, has been recognized, sales and marketing can then begin to plan how to attain mutual success. Yes, it helps if everyone have a meeting in a conference room and listen to each other's ideas. For instance, marketing people can start by outlining what they are looking for when they have a targeted business lead generation campaign, and sales could contribute if they think the proper criteria are being employed. Come up with a list of your ideal customer and begin to form one or more personas for marketing in order to work on targeting.

3) Show them what's going on. For a different team building approach, get into the sales and marketing tag-team, buddy-buddy system. Then, have the marketing members to tag along with the sales people during sales demos. This can be an encouraging process, enabling the marketers (who are commonly detached from the field) to see and feel what it is like to be out "there". This educational experience would both let them get a feel for the concerns and issues of their target market, and then see how their sales team performs in action.

4) Launch a Service-Level Agreement (SLA). Establish some standards on how to handle those incoming leads. An SLA between sales and marketing typically involves mutually agreed upon standards such as:

--Meeting 3 criteria points (established by both sales and marketing) would eventually generate lead assignment. --Once assigned, sales would follow up with new leads within 2 days

5) Improve the process. Make sure that the teams meet regularly (once every 3 months is good) in order to update about how the market has developed. Much better if you can assign a member of the marketing group to attend regular sales meetings in order to have an open line of communication between sales and marketing.

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Belinda Summers is a professional Lead Generation Consultant helping corporate organizations increase their revenue through telemarketing lead generation and appointment setting strategies. To know more about lead generation and appointment setting, visit: http://www.callboxinc.com/

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