Aligning Lead Management and Sales Management

Stumbled across this blog entry recently on Glance Networks, and having done exactly what Tom Scontras is talking about for three or four years now, I related completely.

He nails #4 on the head—it’s a constant game in both sales and marketing to not outsmart ourselves. Don’t toss away something that works pretty well in hope of chasing the “home run” without really, really researching it out first.

We’ve wasted a lot of dollars over the years because we forgot to split test everything. When it comes to your lead generation efforts, don’t make decisions based on your gut. I’ve discovered that there’s almost always a way to measure results, and then improve. It takes time and effort, but aligning your ad words, ad impressions, click-through, conversions, and sales process creates power and synergy.

The other thing Tom hits out of the park is the idea that the marketing to sales transition needs to be seamless, from first “touch point,” to conversion, to feedback. I’m still shocked, frankly, how many companies still haven’t figured out that they’re wasting money on marketing when they don’t have any real way to measure what’s working and what’s not. If online CRM seems to be more hype than substance lately, it’s only because there’s a lot of people who are willing to sell the software, but don’t have a clue how to really make it productive for the people who use it. The fact of the matter is, the only way to do what Tom’s talking about—making the marketing-to-sales handoff seamless—is to leverage current technologies for all that they’re worth.

“Seamless” means the prospect never knows there’s a transition. It means the sales rep knows exactly how the prospect got there, which lead source generated them, and what the prospect sees as being most important. Seamless means that ad words and sales collateral translate across team lines. Seamless means shared mind set. It means that sales and marketing&#8212two organizations that have historically gotten along as well as a pit bull and a Siamese&#8212are working in parallel, and not just meeting each other occasionally as they zig-zag across the company sales “goal line.”

Author: Ken Krogue |
Summary of Ken Krogue’s Forbes articles

Lead Response Management Study

Free Lead Resonse Management Study

Answer the question, “When should companies call Web-generated leads for optimal contact and qualification ratios?”

Receive email updates from the Sales Insider

Related Posts