1. Align terminology
First of all, it is necessary to align the terminology and involve not only the marketing team but also the sales team in this phase. It is necessary to create awareness on how, in the transformation of leads into opportunities, the work belgium telegram data of each individual influences that of those who preside over the subsequent phase and it is therefore important to share and find agreement on which and how many fundamental touchpoints should be within the customer journey of a lead in the interaction with the company (lifecycle stage). To give an example, it is necessary to make sales understand that a visitor to the site is nothing more than a potential buyer and that all the information we can collect about him, mapping the navigation or tracking his interactions with emails, newsletters or other content provided by marketing, is used to better calibrate the messages when that prospect decides to undertake a purchase or a commercial negotiation.
2.Share a process
Second step: define a shared process . Once the interrelationship between the different functions is understood and the elements of mutual influence are understood, it is important to define who does what and how .
It will therefore be necessary to set up a series of more or less automated steps that allow the passage of information from one department to another. In this phase it is very important to also define the necessary alignment at the technological infrastructure level because it is clear that the tools for this transition are marketing automation tools , the company CRM and the sales pipeline management tools .
The final result must be the design of a process that traces the buyers journey of each lead cluster and defines it in a fluid manner, ensuring the user's passage from the information search part to the commercial negotiation part without any friction.
3.Define the SLA
Let's move on to step 3: that of defining the SLA , mainly between Marketing and Sales teams. You can well understand that having identified the entire path that a contact, potential buyer must travel, it will be easy to hypothesize KPIs and set goals .
Creating an SLA means being able to imagine and predict in a plausible way how many sales will have to be closed in the period we are considering. By doing a backward calculation we could calculate how many visits and leads will have to be generated by marketing.
4.Measurement and reporting
Last but not least is the step of setting up a virtuous circle of reporting and feedback from both sides . In fact, by measuring the KPIs defined along the entire customer acquisition chain, it will be easy to intervene on the individual steps and make adjustments on the marketing side - for example because they are talking to the wrong buyer persona - or on the sales side - because they are engaging past contacts in a way that is not very effective .
The circle must then be fed by feedback from both sides because if marketing creates messages and communication strategies based only on more or less tested methodologies , it is sales that then directly comes into contact with customers or potential buyers. Or again, it is marketing that, using more and more automation and profiling tools, can provide sales with a considerable amount of information on the interlocutor of the commercial conversation.
It is therefore essential to create a constant exchange of feedback and suggestions that are not only qualitative but also quantitative to adopt data-driven decisions and make the process even more efficient.
The 3 Most Common Mistakes in the Lead Management Process
In defining a lead management process in a structured way, it is important to take care of every action to be taken in interactions with prospects in detail. There are three mistakes in particular to avoid that can undermine every effort in the lead generation strategy , which are often crucial for the success of the overall campaign.
1. Avoid invasive and insistent messages: communication must be useful and tailored
In the era of the search for non-interruption in the use of content, advertising and commercial content must be calibrated as much as possible for the audience to whom we are speaking so as not to be perceived as a stop in their online experience but as an opportunity to derive greater value from it. It is therefore important to use automation tools but avoid massive, invasive or insistent messages . Marketing automation technologies today allow us to profile the user and understand what our buyer expects and when he expects it.
