Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Hey Marketing, Do You Know Who Your Customer Is?

Being a Marketing Pro ain't easy. Trying to please Sales, your CEO and CFO all at the same time, I don’t envy your position. Nowhere to hide and very difficult to prove value.

I’m here to tell you, it doesn't have to be that way.  Over the past ten plus years AG has worked with more than 300 clients. The bad news was that many Marketing teams were not nearly as effective as they could have been; the good news, (beware of shameless self promotion), they engaged with AG Salesworks. Yes we are awesome at what we do, but I have to admit that was only part of of the reason for these marketer’s success.

The main reason for the drastic improvement for most teams we have worked with is that they decided to align around best practices with laser focus and stellar execution. There are a lot of things to think about as a marketer; Website, SEO, Social Media, Blogs, MQL’s, SQL’s, Conversion rates, Public Relations, trade shows and many more that I did not mention.  

So what does alignment around best practices mean?  First of all determine what is important to your customer, Sales. Sales needs help getting to their number. If you can help them reach their number, they will love you. If they love you, they will tell others, the word gets out as to what a great job you are doing and good things start to happen.  

Ok, how do we help Sales get to their number?  Leads. Not just any leads, but fully qualified leads. We all know Sales is not likely to spend a ton of time relentlessly pursuing a lightly qualified lead. They would argue it is a waste of their time, you would argue it is their job. Tell you what, arguing is a waste of time, why not put in place a system of producing high quality leads that by it’s very nature aligns Marketing and Sales?  First build a process of developing and delivering quality content which piques the interest of your ideal customer, encouraging them to engage.  Next, use telequalification to have an actual conversation with the prospect, ensuring you are able to separate the tire kickers from the “real” prospects. Once your telequal team identifies the best prospects, its time to deliver them to sales.  Sales is going to love the quality, and enjoy high conversion rates to the next step in their sales process. Track this conversion rate, it is your report card. It is the one metric that will justify your existence to your CEO. It also helps your VP of Sales track the performance of the sales team.  

Marketers who embrace this focused approach to achieve alignment, enjoy results many times higher than those who spread their marketing budget “a mile wide and only and inch deep.” Commit to the basics, add value to you prospects, talk to them and show them how you can help them solve a problem, reach a goal or both.

To help ensure both sales and marketing are in alignment, we have partnered with The Bridge Group, to help companies align to best practices in focus, and execution in order to achieve the highest return from their sales prospecting and lead qualification efforts.

Demonstrable value is what every customer wants, your customer (Sales) is no different.

Thanks for reading!