For many companies, sales performance falls far short of revenue targets. However, some companies are more successful than others. Among the top 10 percent of companies, 71.2 percent of salespeople meet or exceed quota, generating 111.4 percent of company revenue goals, while among the bottom 30 percent, just 41.4 percent of salespeople meet or exceed quota, generating just 49.6 percent of revenue targets.
What are the top companies doing differently than underperformers? Often, a disconnect between marketing and sales is an underlying contributor to sluggish sales. Successful companies coordinate their marketing and sales efforts for optimal results. Here are three ways you can integrate your marketing and sales efforts for better closing rates and higher revenue.
1. Build Pre-qualifying into Your Marketing and Sales Processes
One of the most common causes of poor sales performance is a disconnect between marketing and sales which fails to qualify leads. Inability to generate qualified leads is one of the biggest challenges for sales organizations.
Several best practices can help close the gap between your marketing and sales teams. First, your marketing and sales team should have a common definition of a qualified lead so that everyone is on the same page. This common definition should be built into your marketing team’s analytics strategy to ensure that they’re reaching out to the desired target audience.
Using a lead scoring system that ranks your prospects in terms of specific criteria can help make your qualifying process more objective and data-driven. For instance, a prospect who has requested a demonstration might rank higher than one who has only downloaded a free report.
For best results, establish a standard operating procedure defining how qualified leads are passed on from your marketing team to your sales representatives. Using a good CRM tool can help you automate the process of scoring qualified leads. Signing up your sales managers for Infor CRM training can help them master how to use this CRM feature and other advanced CRM applications.
2. Use Discovery Questions to Pre-close the Sale
The marketing qualifying process can continue into the sales process through the use of carefully-crafted discovery questions. Well-chosen probing questions help you quickly determine what your prospect’s needs are, which of your product’s benefits might appeal to them, what priorities are guiding their sales decisions, and what objections your sales representative will need to counter to close the sale. Asking the right discovery questions can go a long way towards pre-closing the sale even before the discussion moves into the closing phase, helping ensure that the angle emphasized in the sales pitch is one that will appeal to the buyer.
The deeper your team’s knowledge of your product, your market, and your competition, the more precise discovery questions you can develop. As a basic framework, structure your discovery questions around three basic themes: where does your prospect want to go next, where are they now, and what’s holding them back from achieving their goals? Pursuing these questions will help determine whether the prospect is a good fit for your product and, if so, will steer the conversation towards a compelling close.
3. Implement Follow-up Sales Procedures
Marketing shouldn’t end when the sales team takes over. In fact, follow-up marketing is crucial for an effective sales process. With the proliferation of communication technology since the rise of the Internet and mobile phones, today it takes an average of 52 percent more marketing touches to close a deal than it traditionally did. The number of required touches is now split evenly between pre-sales and sales touches which can include promotional emails, calls, voicemails, follow-up emails, conference calls, and actual sales appointments. Moreover, a prospect may not buy immediately after a sales appointment but may be persuaded to buy with persistent follow-up.
This makes it crucial for your sales process to include standard follow-up procedures. Document what your sales team should do in each possible scenario during the marketing and sales process. For instance, what is your policy if a prospect doesn’t return a voice mail? Do you call back or email? How long do you wait before trying to follow up with a prospect again?
Once you have outlined your standard follow-up procedures, you can automate the process. Use your CRM tool to schedule automated follow-up notifications for your sales team and to schedule follow-up autoresponder emails, IVR phone calls, and texts to prospects. Track your results to see how effective your procedures are working so you can make adjustments and improvements.
Marketing and sales disconnects can impede your sales process, but taking steps to integrate your marketing and sales efforts will optimize your results. Build pre-qualifying into your processes by using your CRM tool to score qualified leads. Use discovery questions to elicit buyer needs and pre-close sales. Implement follow-up sales procedures to maximize your closing rate. Following these guidelines will streamline your flow of qualified leads, increase your closing rate, and multiply your revenue.
