Never Stop Learning

#5 out of 40- Quality Codes

Assign a quality code to each qualified sales lead.  Whether its on a lead sheet or SFA/CRM.  The 3 critical goals of customer relationships are:
    1. acquisition
    2. retenetion
    3. profitability

Assigning a quality code will help you acieve 2 objectives.  It will help prioritize sales and service efforts(A, B, & C type clients, 80/20 rule, etc).  It will also help you evaluate the effectiveness of each marketing activity.  Marketing activity A may be producing 100 leads and activity B may be producing 10 leads, but which is producing the highest quality leads and the highest revenue?

#4 out of 40- Successfull Sales Policy

The only successful sales lead follow up policy is 100%.  Something that I'm guily of not following myself, but I have made it a priority to follow up within 24 hours. 

If you are a business owner or a marketing manager you understand how much each lead is costing you (# of leads / sales promotion costs).  Tell your salespeople or manager that each lead is costing the company $XXX.  (stop reading here and walk over and tell them now)

Relevant statistics:  On average, 45% of all leads BUY.  It breaks down to a game of numbers.  Only 25% of your competitors are following up on their leads.  Follow up 100% and your sales progress chart will be up and to the right.

#3 out of 40-- 3 types of ammo Marketing should give Sales

Marketing and Sales have the same goals in mind- to hit certain revenue goals, among others.  While Marketing's objective is to provide hot prospects, there are ways marketing can help sales accomplish their objective of closing deals.  Here are 3 ways marketing can help sales close large prospects:

1.  An article in a magazine, especially in a trade magazine, gives the business and its solutions third party credibility.  It can be used in proposals and as ammo for salespeople during a follow up call.

2.  Arm your salespeople with case studies for each service offering.  Give sales the power to show concrete examples of how they have helped previous clients in the prospect's same situation.

3.  Use whitepapers, guides, and blogs to help salespeople position the company as an expert on the subject.  This can lower a prospect's defenses and establish trust in their relationship with the salesperson.

Divvy up the budget and resources to help salespeople close bigger deals more often.

#2 out of 40 Tell Sales> Help Me Help You!

After months of hard work pounding out strategy and executing tactics the leads you created sit on the salesperson's desk as he talk trash to bBalling69 ( his fantasy football apponent) about the Colts defense's last second stand against the Patriots.  You would like to see a 100% call back on all leads, but to the salesperson the leads aren't good enough.

Have sales participate in inital strategy sessions.  Allow them to define extactly what a good lead is.  You'll have a better idea of what tactics to use because you'll know who to target.  Its not just good marketing sense, its better politics as well.  We'll give deeper into the persona development process soon.