"What do I do with Leads that I generated?" That's probably the most recurring question among people who have passed the early stages and applied the strategies we talk about a lot here on the blog: they created educational materials, Landing Pages and now they have a good base of Leads.
Leads shouldn't be seen as a cute number in marketing manager metrics to make him proud. They have to contribute directly to sales and, as a consequence, to the actual results of the company. That's why we never see the Leads generation as a vanity metric.
Leads are business opportunities
If your company is content with the Leads being treated only as a mailing list, chances are it's not making the most of the opportunities.
Leads are so much more than emails. Each person who has filled out a form on the company's website is showing interest in the topic or more than that: they have a "pain", a problem they need to solve.
However, a company that seeks to know more about Digital Marketing through our eBooks is showing that it wants to improve its performance in the area, which is, for us, a good opportunity to sell our products and services.
The difference is that, thinking about a common purchasing process, these people are only in the first steps.
But letting people go through this process on their own, without the help of your company, decreases the results and greatly increases the time in the sales cycle. It is possible and feasible to accelerate this path.
How a company can act to turbine the process
Providing knowledge is the most effective way for your company to accelerate the sales cycle for a Lead.
Only those who have learned to appreciate the most expensive wines buy them. Cosmetic companies offer make-up courses because they know that those who learn to make up buy more products. For us, it only makes sense to offer Digital Marketing software to those who know this strategy and understand the role of software to extract results from it.
If your company wants faster results, you should worry about giving relevant information for the Lead to get through each step.
How is that done? The division between marketing and sales is a kind of a tease. The more mature the company is in its Digital Marketing practices, the less the sales area is responsible for doing this information and vice versa.
We usually divide companies into 3 major evolutionary stages:
Minimum digital presence
There are businesses that have only one website, usually static or with little relevant content. At most, an account created in some social network, also without significant results.
In this type of case, very few business opportunities are generated by the site. The salespeople usually work with contacts that they themselves seek and go through the entire sales cycle together with the prospect, investing a lot of the time they have available and generating more expenses.
In this scenario, cold calls are very common which, as we have already said, have extremely low efficiency.
Digital Marketing Management
In a more advanced stage, are the companies that worry about doing a good management of Digital Marketing.
They are the ones who maintain a relevant blog about their field of work, have an attractive presence in social media and create materials and Landing Pages for Leads generation.
These companies also often send newsletters and new materials via email, and all of the content encourages Leads to move forward on the buying journey. However, this process occurs without sufficient speed and scale to ensure the best possible results.
If vendors focus only on Leads that are in the final stage of the purchasing process, such as those asking for a budget or a product/service demonstration, the efficiency of each approach will be greater, but the volume may be insufficient to keep the pipeline full.
As at this stage a more significant number of Leads are already generated, our recommendation is that the commercial area fill in the rest of the time serving those Leads that fit the target audience profile very well, even if they are still in the beginning or middle of the cycle.
The user who accessed the content, became familiar with the brand and the way the company solves the problem already has some kind of confidence that facilitates the sale, which is much more efficient than cold calls.
If your company does not meet or attempt to accelerate the conversion of these Leads, it is unreasonable to complain that sales volume is low or that the generation of Leads is inefficient.
Marketing Automation
There are companies that have been doing all the Digital Marketing management for a long time, have effective results, high volume of Leads and feel ready to move to the next level.
The intention of this internship is to do, in an individual and at the same time automated way, the work of directing a Lead from the initial stages of interest to the point closest to the final purchasing decision.
For this, the automation of Leads nutrition is essential: sequences of emails already programmed and sent by a marketing software that deliver to the few content relating to each stage of the sales process.
This increases the number of opportunities generated in the final stage of decision making and allows salespeople to stop serving potential customers in initial steps to focus on those where the chance to close business is greatest, i.e. those who have already shown strong interest in the product or service your company sells.
How the alignment between marketing and sales should work
Of course, in theory it's all very nice. However, the stages are not always well defined and there are intermediate stages between them.
In any case, an essential step to success is to ensure that the sales and marketing teams are in harmony, with the teams working together for each other's success.
Nothing better to ensure this balance than having an SLA (Service Level Agreement). The document establishes the minimum that each area must deliver to the other.
To establish a good SLA between the teams, our recommendation is to go through these 4 stages:
Define what a MQL is
MQL stands for Marketing Qualified Lead or Marketing Qualified Lead. In practice, MQL is a Lead that is part of your company's ideal audience, no matter your stage in the purchase process.
In the agreement it is necessary to define what are the characteristics that make the Lead someone qualified. Some items that can be entered into the agreement are:
- Age;
- Sex;
- Geographical location;
- Cargo;
- Company size;
- Market in which the company operates;
- Level of technical knowledge;
- Number of materials previously downloaded;
- Kind of material you were interested in.
Define what a SAL is
SAL is equivalent to Sales Accepted Lead or Sales Accepted Lead. A SAL is a Lead that is at the bottom of the funnel and has already had its profile analyzed and accepted for sales. Here in RD, the one who does this work is a SDR (Sales Development Representative), from the pre-sales team.
The SDR analyzes the Lead's history, site, and profile to ensure that it has buying potential before it actually makes contact. It is a validation by sales of the work done by marketing.
This ensures that the contact is accurate and that only the Leads most likely to buy are actually approached, which increases productivity, especially when there is high volume.
Hitting MQL and SAL delivery targets
With the previous steps already defined, the next step is to get right how much of each type of Lead the marketing team should pass on to the sales team monthly.
Much more than followers on Twitter or Facebook, pages visited and so on, this will be the big goal to be beaten by the head of Digital Marketing in the company.
These numbers vary depending on two items: the maturity of the company in Digital Marketing (or how much each type of Lead is currently generated) and the company's ability to serve these users (the size of the sales force).
With the goals set, it is necessary to think about ways to operationalize the action.
There must be a way to communicate that the relationship with a Lead is no longer the responsibility of the marketing team and has been taken over by the sales sector. This is also important for the SLA's own accountability.
The sales team should also be charged for standards in a Lead approach. Marketing usually works hard on the relationship to gain the confidence of the potential customer, and salespeople who are very aggressive and annoy the Lead can make every effort to go down the drain.
The approach of a Lead that came to your company through educational material is quite different from the approach of a Lead won by your product, for example.
In general, the secret is to bait the Lead into the next step, without forcing the situation. If he doesn't take the bait or show interest in the next steps, return him to the marketing team and wait for him to come back in time.
