Sales and Marketing Alignment
According to an Aberdeen study, companies with strong sales and marketing alignment achieve 20% more in annual revenue, while companies that don’t realize a 4% decline. That’s a huge gap, but one that’s easily fixable: Sales and Marketing share goals to close sales.
At HubSpot, a rapidly growing marketing software company, Sales and Marketing don’t just share the same goals – they share the same space. The conversations about what’s working and what isn’t take place informally every day and formally in regular meetings. Functioning as a Smarketing department,HubSpot has removed the traditional friction between departments by eliminating traditional barriers.
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Lead management process
When you can track web visitor activity with a tool like Hubspot, you can identify where they are in the buying cycle. Using a lead management process turns knowledge into gold. Here are nine points to consider:
- Not all leads are created equal; decide together what defines a qualified lead. Are they still in the research phase (reading educational blogs, checklists, etc.), or are they signaling they’re sales-ready (starting a trial, attending a webinar).
- How many leads does Marketing need to generate per sales rep per month? Are there a sufficient number of sales-ready leads for the sales rep to meet her quota?
- Do the sale reps have the lead intelligence generated (What calls to action triggered the visit? What pages were viewed? Is this a return visit?)
- What’s the sales process used to develop the lead further?
- If the lead isn’t qualified, what trigger returns them to a nurturing campaign?
- Does the sales team share ownership of marketing content? A rep whose name is on a blog article is far more likely to share it.
- Are the offers made in marketing campaigns setting the right expectations? If not, what’s causing the friction?
- Do some types of offers resonate more consistently with prospects? Marketing needs that feedback.
- Is everyone accountable? Sales reps have their quotas and incentives What about Marketing?
Sit down together – and decide together – how to develop and manage your sales leads. Then (hard data is key) keep discussing, evaluating, and refining.
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