Scheduling Visits: covering the Marketing-Sales GAP
By Joan Carles Sanjurjo
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Lead qualification can be the cause of success or failure in any business project. The SDR team sending Sales to meet with clients who are not at the point of purchase is a clearly avoidable cost. Traditionally, Sales reproaches Marketing for the fact that the quality of the leads is quite low. And perhaps Sales is somewhat right. Let's see in this article how optimizing the appointment scheduling function can bring Marketing and Sales closer together.
Table of Contents
The gap between marketing and sales
Bridging the GAP with External SDRs
The gap between marketing and sales
Browsing through my favorite bloggers’ posts on Feedly, I came czechia business email list across an article by Bridge Group talking about “Perceptions and Weightings in Marketing Leads.” I ask you to pay attention to the following graph, created with data collected in a survey of more than 1,150 B2B Salespeople.
Perceptions and Weightings in Marketing Leads
Can you believe that 53% of respondents said that only 1/4 (or less) of the leads generated by Marketing, in the form of appointments, were at the optimal time to be converted into a sale? It is certainly a revealing statistic and can be read in different ways. Here are some of my interpretations:
Marketing needs to be more focused. While it may not always be possible to segment your target market, it is always a good idea to get as close as possible. Your entire marketing mix – pay-per-click ads, blogs, SEO, SDR team, qualification – needs to be refined, thought out from scratch in some cases, and targeted to a specific audience, so that Sales will see value in the activity of booking visits.
Sales has to be resilient enough to tolerate some unqualified leads from Marketing. In a perfect world, a perfect prospect would be knocking on your door, check in hand, and shouting, “Open up! You’re the only one who can help me.” But that’s not the case. If your salespeople can drive leads, they should also be able to properly qualify them.
Bridging the GAP with External SDRs
Now more than ever, it is important to have a team of SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) to fill the gap between Marketing's raw leads and Sales. Whether you decide to outsource your SDRs and their lead qualification and scheduling activity to a company like heading2market or you do it with members of your team, it is recommended that you assign a person or team to manage the qualification of your Marketing leads.
Ultimately, Marketing and Sales can meet in a middle ground as long as expectations are set appropriately, and both could benefit from a team of SDRs, who qualify and arrange the sales appointment, operating between them.
