Are Your Marketing Leads Slipping Through The Cracks?
There is nothing more exciting to us than a company with a marketing team generating an abundance of marketing qualified leads and a sales team hungry to get those leads converted to sales ready opportunities. It can sometimes be downright mind boggling to us as to why and how a lot of these leads are not being properly followed up on. Considering our specialty is prospecting and investigating the target marketplace to uncover “sales ready” opportunities – weeding through marketing generated leads as opposed to straight cold calling is music to our ears! I guess it’s important to remember that this investigational work isn’t necessarily fun for everyone. If you are not working with an outsourced teleprospecting firm, it is important to make sure you have a team in place that is dedicated to prospecting new accounts. Here are some tips on how to effectively convert marketing qualified leads into sales ready opportunities:
Have a Dedicated Teleprospecting Team: It is natural for your outside sales team to spend a lot of time with opportunities already in forecast. The problem is that they can get so busy with the existing pipeline, that their efforts into following up on marketing qualified leads is not consistent enough to be effective. Make sure you have a teleprospecting team in place to maintain a consistent flow of forecast for your sales team. This team should be designed to specialize in “qualifying” opportunities for your sales team and not closing business.
Properly Arm your Teleprospecting Team: Ensure that your teleprospecting team has a consistent flow of marketing qualified leads to maintain a high volume of prospecting activity. This team should not have to spend too much time on research, so it is important that they either have leads from a marketing campaign or highly targeted list of potential accounts in front of them. To make this process even more effective, have someone in place dedicated to building your database and creating target lists for your teleprospecting team to supplement marketing generate lead activities.
Have An Effective Teleprospecting Message: The outbound email and voicemail messaging for your teleprospecting team should be designed to open the conversation rather than sell a solution. The goal for the teleprospector should be to secure a short 5 minute conversation to learn about your prospect. Avoid dumping to much information about your company before you learn about their challenges. The goal of this conversation should be to qualify your prospect as an opportunity, qualify them out as an opportunity, or get a referral to the best person to speak with.
Teleprospecting is essential to maintain a healthy forecast for your sales team. As you sales team does not always have the time or bandwidth to dedicate the appropriate amount of time to prospecting, make sure you have a team in place to keep up a healthy level of sales ready opportunities.
What is your approach for feeding your hungry sales team sales ready opportunities?