Tag Archive for: Sales Cycles

Lead Liaison

Finding Solutions with Marketing Automation

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Have you got some marketing or sales problems? It’s time to find solutions with marketing automation. Most marketers end up only using marketing automation as a glorified email system, when there is so much more they could be doing! There are many underutilized features. Instead of looking at your marketing automation company as a bunch of really cool features, try to focus more on the solutions that they bring.

Problem: Our company just lost our best sales person. Now we’ve got to start from scratch with someone else. We don’t have the time or resources to slow down right now!

Solution: Marketing automation will help your company build a process around different phases of your business. For example, discovery meetings, post-demos, new customers, anniversaries, these are all important events in a prospect’s lifecycle that you could systemize for your company. Marketing automation is the right tool to help you implement a process around each of these events. When sales and marketers use these resources, they spend less time doing it manually and communicate your company’s messaging more accurately and consistently. When there’s a process in place, it makes it easier to insert or replace new employees and help them get up to speed; thereby lowering the cost of employee turnover.

Problem: I’ve overused the method of email communication. I need more ways to communicate with my prospects.

Solution: Companies that follow up their initial contact using different methods, in a persistent manner, get people thinking about them more and more. They wonder why this company is spending so much time trying to contact them. Research shows it takes anywhere from 5 to 7 touches in B2B sales before you can get someone’s attention. All five touches shouldn’t use the same communication channels though, they should be different, hitting the prospect from different angles. It could be a postcard, a text message, or even a handwritten letter! Find a marketing automation company that offers multiple channels of communication. Lead Liaison has the most channels of communication on the market.

Problem: I need to shorten my sales cycle.

Solution: It’s a known fact that nurturing leads shortens sales cycles by 23% and increases deal size by 47%. What salesperson wouldn’t want to close bigger deals, faster? Lead nurturing is a subtle way to build stronger relationships with people. The way to communicate is through education, and not blowing up the person’s cell phone or inbox with constant messages asking them if they’re ready to buy. You also want to make your communication personal, with your communication coming from the salesperson (lead owner). This is the entire concept around inbound marketing. Educate people, and when they’re ready to buy they’ll contact you. Nurturing workflows are typically setup by a marketer and used, and reused, over and over by the sales team. Nurturing is a 1:1 strategy, not a one-to-many strategy, and can be applied to prospects, customers, or partners. Check out the “Help Sales” portion of our Marketing Automation Playbook for some ways in which nurturing workflows could be used.

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Lead Liaison

4 Ways Marketing Automation Shortens Sales Cycles

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4 ways marketing automation shortens sales cyclesHow long is your company’s sales cycle? Two weeks? Six Months? A year? Brand leaders in the B2B space constantly seek ways to shorten their sales cycles. Many have found that a marketing automation platform helps to reduce the number of days to close. Why? Here are four of the most popular feedback points we get when we talk with our markets.

“Some leads are deeper in the funnel.” Not all leads are at the same stage of the buying cycle. Some come to your brand fully educated about the solutions they seek; others just starting to explore their options. Through consistent, automated outbound messaging, your brand’s presence is continuously in the market. Marketing messages can be varied – and personalized. Automated personalization is one way to connect faster so qualification can move swiftly, shortening the “get to know you” phase. Using marketing automation, marketers are able to manage leads at different stages of the buying cycle, which provides the sales team with a continuous pipeline of leads.

“You can fire on all cylinders.” Marketing automation allows marketers to easily connect through more channels simultaneously. Email, social, PPC, and search can be integrated under one campaign, which increases the ability to “flood” your leads by connecting channels and delivering escalating engagements. Response rates can be quickly analyzed so agile companies can adjust practices quickly. Multi-channel campaigns that offer incrementally higher value can be deployed alongside campaigns that simply introduce your solution.

“Makes our sales agents hungry.” Sales likes quality leads. It’s the same in every organization. Marketing automation allows sales agents to focus on the hottest prospects in the pipeline. This usually means the ones that are most qualified to buy and most knowledgeable about your solutions. Nurturing campaigns and scoring features qualify how ready prospects are so sales people aren’t wasting valuable time chasing leads that aren’t ready to buy. Less waste leads to shorter buying cycles.

“Leads are going to the right people.” Let’s face it – not every sales rep is good for every lead. Marketing automation distributes leads effectively assigning ownership to the most appropriate sales person who can respond quickly and close fast. Lead assignment can be set upon first touch or somewhere during the qualification period. Getting the leads into the right rep’s hands can shorten the cycle by several days to several weeks.

Lead Liaison

5 Ways Lead Management Automation Reduces Your Sales Cycle

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5 Ways Lead Management Automation Reduces Your Sales CycleB2B sales teams look for ways to reduce the sales cycle with the goal of faster revenue generation (which, in turn, leads to higher annual payout). The challenge for many salespeople is to manage tasks in an efficient way so more time can be devoted to selling which should be expected to reduce time-to-close. Lead management automation provides the mechanism to shorten the sales cycle.

According to Gartner Research, B2B companies see a 10% or greater increase in revenue within 6-9 months of implementation of a lead management automation platform. Part of that increase is due to efficiencies that allow your salespeople to close deals faster.

Score Leads for Quality and Relevance

When sales agents are occupied with the most-suitable-and-potentially-interested prospects, the chances for conversion are greater. Through LMA, leads are automatically scored according characteristics that indicate suitability for your solutions and digital behavior that reveals how a buyer does research and how well-informed he is about your solutions.

A lead’s score will automatically update when new qualifying information is received or when a new online engagement has occurred. By automating lead management, your sales team can prioritize its focus on leads with the potential to close the earliest.

Distribute Leads Effectively

Do you want your fastest closer working on leads of the same quality as a new hire? Do you want your tech industry specialist getting leads from the manufacturing industry? NO! With LMA, leads can be distributed according to parameters you set. This way, once leads are properly qualified, they can be assigned ownership according to which agent can best convert the lead efficiently thus reducing the sales cycle.

Faster Response

Using an automated lead management platform, customized response and/or follow-up messaging is delivered according to a schedule that can be set once (theoretically). While a sales agent is busy with other tasks, an email can be sent immediately following a request from a lead. By eliminating delays associated with a busy sales team, the cycle can be reduced.

Better (and Faster) Intelligence Collection

An LMA collects, organizes, and segments digital lead activity faster and to a greater degree than your salespeople can do manually. As the article in the link above suggests, salespeople spend only 35% of their time actually selling. Often the non-selling time is consumed with business intelligence collection. With LMA, when a lead fills out a form or clicks on a certain link, your salesperson is provided with actionable intelligence immediately. Agents can use the intelligence to engage with prospects in a way that supports the digital path the prospect has taken when researching for a B2B solution.

More Efficient Lead Nurturing Across Media

LMA provides several channels of communication that can allow a lead to become familiar with your company and its solutions more quickly. As a lead moves through the marketing funnel, customized information flows that target specific needs can accelerate the lead advancement to a sales-ready status. Once the lead has become suitably educated and informed about your solutions, you sales agents can get involved and convert more quickly.