How Smart Marketers Can Help Shorten the Sales Cycle

Nov. 03, 2010

Smart Marketers We’ve talked many times before about the struggles that many companies have between their sales and marketing teams. The general opinion among marketers is that they’re doing their job, but sales isn’t pulling their weight. Often marketers feel that they generate lots of leads to hand-off to sales, but sales teams just don’t follow up properly and opportunities are lost. Well that may be true for some organizations, but it certainly isn’t true for all of them, and there are some things that marketing teams can do to help streamline this process and minimize clashes between teams.

One of the first things that a marketing team can do to help to shorten the sales cycle is to try and understand how their sales team feels about the leads they are being given by marketing. Often, while marketing may feel like they're giving sales the right leads, sales teams feel that they are being handed leads based on quantity over quality.

Marketing’s perspective:

Sales team isn’t closing a large enough percentage of leads
Sales team is taking too long to close deals
Sales teams don’t work hard enough to connect with leads
Sales teams are complaining about lead quality
Sales’ lead follow-up is hit or miss

Sales’ Perspective:

Marketing doesn’t provide enough leads
The leads that marketing provides aren’t good quality
Marketing keeps provide the same old leads

The different perceptions above are quite common in most organizations but there are things marketers can do to help change Sales’ perspective and improve the sales cycle.

Qualify leads based on a universal lead definition. Having a common definition of what a qualified lead is ensures that marketing is pass on the right leads to sales, and that sales is receiving leads that are ready to buy.
Define a standard follow-up process. Do you have a follow-up process in place for each type of lead? Having a clear, standard cycle in place for following up and nurturing a lead can help push a lead through the sales cycle much more quickly.
Ensure that your CMS integrates with your CRM. Having these two systems integrate seamlessly helps to ensure that no leads are lost, and can ensure that both marketing and sales have a clear view of where a lead is in the sales cycle.

Image by mars_discovery_district on Flickr.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at November 3, 2010 8:15 AM