Are Your Marketing, Sales, & Lead-Gen Services DRIVING Revenue?

In recent years, you’ve most likely heard of this little thing called lead generation. You've received email after email, phone call after phone call from marketing companies promoting their services, educating you about inbound marketing, and probably harassing you to the point where you decided to try it out because, let’s face it — you want to be on the forefront of this new style of sales and marketing.
What you probably discovered after painstakingly getting your team immersed in your new lead-gen program (and linked with your CRM) is that something is not quite right — You’re not seeing the growth you assumed you would.

Your marketing department is doing what they’ve been told, and your sales force has been following up with strong leads that come in from the program. So, what’s missing?

You may be experiencing a common condition in business known as Collaboratitis.™

Don’t panic though — you don’t need to consult your primary care physician at this point. There are a few simple steps you can take before you need a prescription.

Let’s get real here for a moment…

Your sales and marketing teams HAVE TO work together, collaborate, and communicate in order to succeed. The relationship is mutually beneficial and crucial for the success of your company, regardless of how each team views its role. Do either of these sound familiar?

MARKETING: “Sales — HA! Who do they think they are? They’d have nothing to do without US!”

SALES: “Those marketing goons think they know everything. Without us, they’d have no clients to market to. WE bring in all of the leads!”

“That’s us, Nick,” you say. “So, what can we do about this division?”

There’s a cure for Collaboratitis.™ It’s called Collaboration!

Collaboration™ is the #1 branded prescription aid-process for getting teams to work with each other to perform tasks that achieve shared goals (like revenue).

In clinical studies, Collaboration™ was proven effective to help increase synergy, morale, and ROI. Individual results may vary. { Tweet this. }

Your teams need to get over their “Me-Me-Me!” attitudes and work together to make your lead-generation program a success. If you’re finding your lead-generation program has become stale or is simply not driving revenue, it’s time to sit down with both teams and discuss what’s happening.

Your processes are already in place, but you need fuel to drive this Bugatti Veyron of a business you’re trying to run. There is no sense in having a gorgeous car without showing off what the car can do on occasion, right? You’ve got two seats: One for sales and one for marketing — It’s time for everyone to take their seats, collaborate, and FLOOR IT to the Finish Line of success!

It all boils down to content.

If your content is weak, your revenue will suffer. It’s not solely one team’s job to create your content; it takes a team approach from both marketing and sales teams to do content marketing well.

COLLABORATIVE CONTENT

No single marketing person can effectively create content that meets the needs of everyone in a business, especially their target market, without the collaboration of those that speak directly to your leads — THE SALES TEAM!

According to Marketing Sherpa, 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified. (Source: MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey; Methodology)

Stop Marketing vs. Sales Bellyaching: Have your two teams reach an agreement as to which leads should be deemed “Marketing Qualified Leads” (MQLs) and passed along for follow-up. This collaborative activity of lead-scoring and categorizing leads by buyer personas will help direct your marketing team’s approach toward high-quality content.

REAL-TIME CONTENT

We know — that eBook you’re so diligently working on that you plan on deploying a month from now is very important. Did you ever think about expediting time-sensitive content related to high-profile trends? Your leads not only appreciate the relevant information you market to them through your consistent email-marketing plan, but they also appreciate your knowledge and your ability to quickly stay on top of trends happening right now.

Sales could really use the boost to promote your business as a trusted source for content that your leads could use right now. Pull your two teams together to take advantage of trending news updates.

INTERACTIVE CONTENT

Continually creating great content and socially engaging those who are finding your eBooks and white papers is a great way to pull in new leads.

You can also survey your existing pool of leads for feedback to trigger new product ideas, find out if your content is annoying or helpful, and more. Depending on how good your content marketing is, pulling in new lists to survey relative to your market has also shown exceptionally high completion rates for lead-gen forms when used with interactive content.

Your consumers love to give feedback. Don’t be afraid to ask. Eloqua has seen an average of an 82% completion rate for lead-generation forms when utilizing interactive content in their marketing strategies.

Now that you know there’s hope with Collaboration,™ you can take these questions and insights about how to move forward collaboratively with your teams to build out your content (i.e., your FUEL in that Bugatti Veyron analogy I mentioned earlier) that you need to show off, to retain your existing clients, and to earn new leads that convert to increased revenue for your business.