Your marketing team is responsible for generating leads. Your sales team is responsible for turning those leads into revenue. It should be a straightforward pipeline, and both your sales and marketing teams should be marching hand in hand. Should be. Often there is a disconnect between marketing and sales: sometimes this means two teams not working together, but it can also be passive lead generation (such as website forms) that simply aren’t being prioritized or even responded to. Learn how to troubleshoot why leads disappear between marketing and sales.
Check In with Sales and Marketing About Lead Generation
To understand how lead generation works on both sides and identify any potential disconnects between departments (even if those departments are an outsourced agency and you, as an owner-operator), you need to talk to both sides. As we go over in the article 3 Solutions to Stop Your Sales and Marketing Disconnect, you need to make sure both sides are using the same language so customers aren’t suffering whiplash and find out which lead generation efforts both sides claim are up and running.
Follow the Lead Generation Pipeline to Sales
Once you’ve talked to both sides about lead generation, it’s time to follow these leads from the top of the funnel all the way to the sales follow-up. Typically, lead generation pipelines take on one of the following forms:
- Phone Calls: When someone calls your business, who picks up? On your website, make sure phone calls are properly configured so you don’t miss any calls.
- Website Forms: When people fill out a form on your website, who receives it? Make sure the right people are looped in, and you’re dealing with spam.
- Advertising: Ads turn your money into leads, so it’s vital they work properly. Learn how to make your dollars go further and better track lead generation here.
- Social Media: If you’re active on a social media platform, you need to check messages for leads regularly. Just know how to spot scams and spam.
- Email & Email Marketing: If you’re doing email marketing, make sure replies go to someone who can act on them. The same goes anywhere you list a company email.
Successfully tracking leads requires planning, attention to detail, and hard work. Learn more about what to do in our article, How to Know If Your Marketing is Actually Working.
Ensure Communication Between Marketing and Sales
If you find any issues with the pipeline, resolve them. But usually, if leads disappear between marketing and sales, it’s a sign of a communication issue between the two. You need to designate point people on both teams to communicate regularly. For example, does your sales team let marketing know the quality of leads from the various pipelines? Known as lead qualifying, this feedback is essential to making better leads that pre-qualify themselves.
If you’re having trouble between marketing and sales, it might be time to change your marketing. That’s where Vision comes in: proactive marketing, communication, and reporting to help you get better leads. If your marketing team has been too quiet (or that’s why you stopped working with an agency), it’s time to talk. Looking for more expert marketing advice? Check out the rest of our Vision blogs, our enVisioning Success podcast, and our downloadable Marketing Strategies Playbook.
