How marketers can help prevent lost sales.

It’s true that one’s own beliefs are built from personal experiences. When it comes to sales, these are mine:

• I spent eight years selling radio advertising. It was my responsibility to find the lead, pitch the lead, close the lead, handle the client and then sell it again. It was not a complex sale, so there was no marketing department involved, no support sales team, no automated nurturing, no scoring, and no free content offers.
• As a direct marketing consultant and copywriter, my experience with the sales departments at a few of my client companies has been that sales doesn’t want anything to do with a lead until the lead is ready to buy. I know this is not universal, but it’s the situation I have experienced.

On one hand, I think sales should do it all. On the other, I think they are too lazy to do anything except close sales. Obviously, when it comes to sales, I’m a bit confused.

That’s why it was so enlightening for me to read the insightful post and thread “Are Marketers Becoming Enablers?” passed along to me by a colleague.

The discussion began between Trish Bertuzzi, founder of The Bridge Group, and Linda Duchin of PowerSteering Software after attending Silverpop’s B2B University in Boston.

They point out that, if marketing takes too much responsibility in the sales nurturing process — and if sales doesn’t have access to the leads until they are sales ready — bad things can happen. Here are just three of them:

1. More aggressive competition may move a prospect ahead in the sales process and win the sale while you are still simply nurturing a prospect .
2. Sales could get lazy and feel they are no longer required to conduct any outbound prospecting.
3. Sales might have time to make more calls, but no access to leads because marketing has not yet deemed them ‘sales ready.’

Not only were their concerns very revealing, but they were followed by comments that shared what I see as very valuable advice. Here are just two things I learned:

Kathy Tito, of Call Center Services, Inc., very nicely removes the fear of going too far in the other direction when she states, “I have seen instances of companies that allow sales leads to become stale by not transitioning them to sales quickly enough to develop interest on the next level. If you have to err on one side or the other, keep in mind that the ‘premature’ hand-off can be managed to have little to no downside. If the lead is not ready, they can always be cycled back into nurture mode.”

Dan McDade of PointClear proposes filling the gap between marketing and sales by adding a layer in between that qualifies, nurtures, and reheats leads to make sure they are being handled by the right area. Many of my clients have in-house tele-sales teams that do just that. Automated nurturing campaigns are great, but, without some human interaction, leads that have progressed further in the buying cycle could be missed.

I propose that marketers consider using the more advanced lead scoring methodology proposed by Bill Herr of Unica and written about by Russell Kern of The Kern Organization for Target Marketing Magazine in “Time to Re-Think BANT.” As you know, BANT (budget, authority, need and timeframe) is the traditional lead scoring method. Bill Herr suggests one that is much more revealing of the lead’s qualification and readiness. He recommends this APNRP approach:

Attributes
Does the prospect company’s size, annual revenue, number of employees, and industry fit the targeted market?

Position
Do the title and job function of the individuals making the evaluation, recommendation or purchase decision match the customer profile?

Need
Has the target expressed any interest in — or taken any action toward — learning how to solve the problem the selling company’s product can solve?

Readiness
Has the lead expressed any interest in learning more about the product or service being sold?

Preferences
Has the lead answered the question of how they want to be contacted in the future?

‘Sales-ready’ is NOT ‘purchase-ready.’ The BANT questions are the ones that should be asked by sales, not marketing; however, this scoring approach helps ensure that leads are passed along to sales before it’s too late.

Thanks to Trish and Linda for bringing up this critical issue, helping us think more about how marketing can help prevent lost sales.

Are your sales people being naughty or nice?

Although this blog is about providing insight into B2B marketing best practices, it’s Santa time — so I thought it would be only fair to spread the giving into the sales department. Earlier in my career, I spent eight years in B2B advertising sales, so I do know something about it.

That’s why I am constantly astonished at how often I see sales people making the same big mistake. Sunday was a perfect example. It started off with a mailing we received inviting us to visit a BMW dealership nearby and take a test drive. In exchange for the test drive we would get a $50 pre-paid gas card. Since there is a strong interest in automobiles in my household, we registered online and, within minutes, the dealership called to set our appointment for 1:30.

When we arrived, the dealership was very quiet — meaning no other customers were in the show room. A sales person approached and asked if he could help. We explained about the appointment and that we were there to take a test drive for the gift.

He did not know anything about the promotion (I will be speaking to “marketing” about that later), but when he discovered the purpose of our visit, he very reluctantly — and very quickly — got the test drive over as fast as he could. He didn’t spend one minute “selling” the car. Didn’t tell us anything about it, didn’t offer to show us the features, nothing. He didn’t even offer us his business card.

We made it clear that we were not buying that day. But if he had been nice and friendly and helpful and interested and given us his card, the next time we were in the market for a car, we might have gone back to see him again.

It makes perfect sense that sales people want to spend time and energy on sales they can make quickly. But every time a sales person blows off a prospect, he or she may be losing a future sale.

In the B2B world (especially for high-ticket products and services) it’s marketing’s job to acquire and nurture qualified leads and not turn them over to sales until they are in the decision-making stage of the buy-cycle. But marketing doesn’t always do its job perfectly. That’s why it’s critical to the company and the sales person’s wallet to treat every contact as a potential buyer.

A sales person never knows at what point a certain process or function within a company will get painful enough for its management to start looking for a solution. Attention given today can pay back in a sale six, eight, or even 18 months from now. It makes sense that sales people cannot spend all their time paying attention to soft prospects. But to ignore them or blow them off completely is a big mistake.

Being naughty not only affects this holiday, but all of those to come.

4 (and only 4) times to involve sales in marketing.

On the phone the other day a client (who shall remain nameless) said he would be asking sales what they want marketing to do for them. After recovering from the immediate and serious threat to my self-control, I gently cautioned my client against this dreadful tactic.

 

That’s because sales will always answer that question with “We want highly qualified leads that are ready to buy.” If your B2B sales group ever responded differently than this, then I’d like to move into the netherworld in which you live. Under most circumstances, the LAST thing you ever want to do is ask sales how to market.

 

However, there are four areas in which the insight of sales is invaluable, because . . .

 

1. Sales actually talks to customers and is therefore a vital resource to helping you understand the pains, hot buttons and objections that your marketing messages must address.
2. Sales must help marketing build a profile of your best prospects by industry, title, decision-maker, influencer, company size, etc. This information is what marketing uses to choose the best channels and marketing techniques for reaching qualified prospects.
3.  Sales is critical in establishing your system of lead scoring (A, B, C, D leads) so marketing can know where leads are in the buying cycle, how they should be nurtured, and when they are ready to be turned over to sales.
4.  Sales must assist in tracking by providing marketing with the outcome of the leads it has turned over to them — closed or lost.

 Of course, sales must be kept in the loop on what marketing is doing, but beyond that and the above, smart marketers keep sales a safe distance away.