Why Alignment Is Necessary
- Marketing cannot generate quality leads without continuous and instaneous feedback from sales. Since sales activities happens offline, if Marketing can’t tell which lead converts, and which leads are disqualified – how can they refine their campaign’s targeting to generate better quality leads?
- Lead Nurturing is a shared activity. Most leads do not convert after one phone call; they might return to the website, check comparative products before they decide. Marketing’s role does not end after lead generation, they need to continuously support Sales – and sync their song. Marketing can nudge and nurture leads who are not ready to buy with drip marketing, until they are ready for sales to call again.
- Sales can close more effectively if they are able to personalize their pitch. Too much information about the lead is lost during the handover from Marketing to Sales. Marketing can enrich the lead profile with insight and context, which enable sales to close more effectively.
Alignment Framework
- Consumer Journey. Start by mapping out the consumer journey from lead to won. Define clearly what and when a prospect is considered Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). There’s a significant difference between both definition; SQL are prospect who are at the late-stage of the buying cycle where else MQL are prospect who will still require some time and nurturing before purchase decision can happen. If Marketing uses SQL as their targeting persona, they will artificially restrict sales volume. If Sales uses MQL as their targeting persona, they will end up wasting a lot of time and effort calling leads who are not ready to convert.
- Scope and Responsibility. Clearly define and agree on how to divvy up the lead nurturing role
- Handover and SLA. Clearly define how, when and what Marketing must provide to Sales and vice versa. For example, what are the minimum information which must be captured in each lead’s profile, the maximum waiting period Sales must contact a qualified lead or how can Sales provide feedback on every qualified lead.
- Champion. Appoint a key person from each team to foster the alignment
- Individual and Joint Target. Define joint target such as revenue, and directional KPI which can be owned by each team.
In this course, we will cover the end to end for online to offline sales and marketing. The course structure will be broken into 4 sections; lead starter and scaler AND closing starter and scaler. Although, lead generation is traditionally seen as a marketing function and closing is a sales function; we recommend that both sales and marketing professional participate in the full course content, so as to prepare for alignment.
