Connecting Marketing and Sales and Closing the Lead Management Loop

Does your Marketing team send well-qualified leads to Sales, but then they fall into a black hole and you have no insight into whether Sales has contacted them, let alone even seen them?

After a year of hard work building and refining their tech stack, one of our clients heard only crickets from the Sales organization about new leads. 

MRM had previously partnered with this client to implement data enrichment, data hygiene, lead scoring, lead handoff, and segmentation, so we were familiar with the technology and processes already in place. Because of our deep knowledge and previous successful projects, the client turned to MRM as a strategic advisor to communicate the benefits of this work to Sales persuade them to close their lead management loop. 

MRM understood that this was not a technology challenge, but a communication challenge. Organization leadership needs to understand how Marketing’s work enables Sales to focus on engaged leads – leads that are more likely to convert to Deals and to Closed Won business.

We prepared leadership-focused messaging that answered 4 key questions:

1. What is it?

What capability did Marketing provide the Sales team that they did not have before?

We used simple, business-focused and value-focused language rather than technical descriptions: An integration that enriches data within HubSpot so that company and contact records are correct, complete, and consistent.

 

2. How does it help the Sales Team?

We used very specific, action-focused language here: Lead Status helps keep qualified leads from getting lost in the shuffle, and prevents Sales from wasting time on leads who are not a fit for the company’s offering.

 

3. What does the Sales Team need to do?

It’s critical that any enhancement require minimal-to-no extra effort on the part of the Sales Team. Their focus is on selling, not on updating fields in a database.

We provided very specific descriptions of what new actions Sales Team members would have to take: Understand the stages captured in the Lead Status field and focus on the specific stage that indicates a Marketing Qualified Lead.

 

4. What decisions or help is needed from leadership?

This is critical as it asks for engagement and ownership by the leadership team. Your goal is for your leadership team to amplify your message about the benefits of Marketing-generated leads so that Sales wants to pay attention to those leads. You may also need approvals from leadership to communicate specific metrics or rules for assigning leads.

Explicitly ask for action from your leadership: Amplify and be a champion of this new capability. Approve (or facilitate approval of) specific rules, timing, stages or content.

 

Conclusion

When you help your organizational leadership understand the business value of your work, you are much more likely to get their engagement and help. Do you need help with Marketing & Sales Alignment? MRM has consultants and senior technical advisors that can help you turn a technical description into an action plan that engages and resonates with leadership.