What's the difference between the status quo--and the era of accountability? I recently chatted with Jonathan Farrington of Top Sales world about the transition from finger pointing to collaboration between sales and marketing. Accountable organizations win bigger deals--and drive a whole lot more revenue. You can listen to the webinar here.
The status quo--where marketing complains about sales not following up on their leads and sales says the leads are no good--is not the place to be. The situation in many organizations today is characterized by:
- A low number of leads (just 42% on average) accepted and worked by sales.
- A almost equally low number of sales reps meeting quota (less than 60%).
- An unrealistic number of leads expected to be sourced by sales (50%).
- Consistently poor sales execution due to a lack of qualified leads.
The era of accountability, on the other hand, paints a much brighter future.
- Every lead turned over to sales is a sales-qualified lead (100%).
- The lead close rate is way higher than average (5X).
- Marketing ROI is measured and credited.
- Sales execs focus on deal making, not sorting through dubious (so-called) leads.
An accountable marketing organization is accountable for lead quality. These marketers accept responsibility for leads--including taking them back to nurture when needed. An accountable sales organization is accountable for follow-up activity. These sales professionals accept responsibility for working all leads to the finish, win or lose. In both camps there's a transparency that hasn't always been present, characterized by a realistic measure of revenue impact of leads--and realistic forecasts. At PointClear, we facilitate accountability that translates into results.
So how do you get from here to there? Ushering in the era of accountability requires leveraging account-based marketing approaches, including:
- Work together to identify targets and target roles. To avoid an inefficient scattershot approach to marketing and sales, figure out the ideal prospect/client profile. Focus on who needs you the most to avoid wasted effort.
- Segment and stratify. Determine which portion of your market you can reach and close most cost effectively. Zero in on prospects with high propensity to buy to keep you from incurring marketing/sales costs that don’t deliver return.
- Use dynamic engagement, including triggers. Map content to audiences of one. Then deliver it via all media (inbound and outbound), across multiple sales cycles, at just the right frequency.
- Analyze, analyze, analyze. You need full visibility into how many touches it takes to generate a lead, your lead rate, and your cost per lead at every stage in the funnel. You need to measure which leads are rejected and why. And you need to know at what rate your leads progress. And why you win or lose.
- Nurture and upsell to achieve advocacy. The goal is not to just close deals, but to create relationships with targets, prospects and clients that last a long time--and that's the job of accountable sales reps and marketers.
For a case study about how one technology company entered the era of accountability (by partnering with our company), read this post. Or give me a call at 770-262-9021.
Topics: Increase Sales, B2B Growth Strategy, Account-Based Marketing, Case Studies, Webinars