How to End the Perpetual Sales vs. Marketing Conflicts: The SLMA

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How to End the Perpetual Sales vs. Marketing Conflicts

Gil Cargil | Articles > From the section: Lead Qualification

November, 2014 |

Cargill Consulting Group, Inc

As the title of this article infers, I believe that many organizations have an ongo-ing conflict between sales and marketing. In some organizations, the "discon-nect" becomes so severe that neither the sales nor the marketing organization are able to function at anywhere near optimal levels. In this article, I will share some of the strategies that have worked for my clients to defuse this internal conflict.

First, let's understand the source of the conflict. Most often, sales and marketing fail to agree on the definition of a lead and/or an inquiry. Salespeople (especially the poor performers) want marketing to produce virtually pre-filled-out contracts and/or purchase orders, which the salesperson will be happy to pick up and claim full credit and commission for.

In my experience, this salesperson is all too common and contributes signifi-cantly to the conflict. This is due to the fact that "a bad lead" is a very popular and easily accepted excuse for poor sales. This traditional excuse for poor sales is the result of failing to define what a lead or an inquiry clearly is.

Inquiry Defined

Inquiries are responses that come from your marketing efforts, which produce an identified individual within an organization who may have interest in exploring the possibility of creating a relationship with your company. I emphasize the word "may" due to the fact that inquiries convert to transactions (in the short term) at traditionally low rates.

However, research conducted by an inquiry handling service shows that any-where from 45-63% of all inquiries eventually purchase products or services identical to that which they inquired about. However, this process takes any-where from six to eighteen months. This becomes one of the contributors to the conflict. The typical salesperson – as directed, motivated, compensated and managed – does not manifest the ability and/or desire to nurture a relationship for that long.

If all of your salespeople knew that 45-63% of all of their inquiries would eventu-ally buy, they would clearly be more attentive to those inquiries. However, I fre-quently find it frustrating to try and change the belief systems of a group of adults. Consequently, you may want to consider creating a process that keeps all inquiries within the marketing department, until such time as the inquiry has been completely profiled and the decision-maker has agreed to a date and time for an appointment.

In my world, an inquiry does not become a lead until the customer has committed to a date and time for an appointment. The traditional deployment of sales forces assumes that the salesperson will be able to stay in touch with a growing list of inquiries in order to be assured that they are positioned with the prospect when the prospect is ready to make that commitment.

This is a flaw of the sales process and can be easily rectified by creating a nur-turing capability within the marketing department. Nurturing is accomplished by regular emails, postcards and any one of a number of marketing strategies I am sure you and your team can execute. It is imperative, however, that you maintain top-of-mind awareness with all inquiries until such time as they are ready to commit to meeting with one of your sales representatives.

Lead Defined

As mentioned above, a lead is an inquiry that has committed to a meeting with a member of your sales team. Once leads are distributed to the sales force, someone within your organization must become accountable for the manage-ment of those leads.

Some studies show that it costs as much as $200 (and, in some cases, even more) to get a qualified lead into the hands of a salesperson. This is the point in the process where another opportunity for disconnect, dysfunction and/or failure to arise.

Research done by the Dartnell Institute indicates that fully 90% of all salespeople abandon the pursuit of any lead after their fourth attempt to advance their sales process with any specific lead. This same research shows that the vast majority of customers will not be prepared to make a buying decision until anywhere from eight to twelve contacts with the sales organization have been completed. Please note: This data refers to business-to-business selling.

Therefore, if your sales team abandons their sales efforts prematurely, they will once again sing the song, "Another bad lead!" Whereas, in reality, your market-ing department has given the team a very good lead; it's just that the salesperson has not been trained and/or managed to ensure that all leads, once assigned, are pursued until they either buy or signal an absolute decision to turn down the offer to buy from your organization.

Summary

In summary, you can eliminate conflicts between sales and marketing by holding salespeople accountable, on a weekly basis, for every lead that has been as¬signed to them. If you use a CRM system, all of your salespeople should track and report on all leads weekly. I seriously doubt your organization would allow haphazard management of any other $200 asset. Even worse, when you con¬sider the lifetime value of a new client, haphazard management of a lead that could become a new client becomes financially catastrophic!

I suggest you have a meeting where representatives of the sales management and the marketing management team gain a clear understanding of the defini-tions of inquiries and make sure that the sales team understands whether they are receiving inquiries or leads from your marketing efforts. Once definitions have been agreed upon, communicate to all members of the sales and marketing team how they will operate.

Establish some sort of a nurturing capability within your organization so that no raw inquiries are ever passed out to the field. This will minimize the volume of leads going to the field, however the quality of lead will ratchet up dramatically and that, in turn, will improve morale and contribute to the elimination of the con¬flict between sales and marketing.

Last, and this may be the hardest part of my suggestions, is for someone to hold all of your sales team (regardless of whether they are direct or indirect) account-able for proper management and reporting on all leads. Once a lead is issued to the field, the salespeople should update a report indicating progress or lack thereof on each lead, on a weekly basis. You should also hold each salesperson accountable for reporting on providing management with a win/loss/postpone report on each lead.

In the event your marketing department generates leads for an independent channel, I would establish rules clearly stating that independent dealers, VARs, agents, etc. who do not update their reports will receive no more leads from your organization.

I hope you find these ideas helpful. As always, I wish you…

About the Author:

Gil Gargill

If you have any questions or would like to discuss ideas for possible marketing messages, feel free to contact Gil Cargill by phone at (877) 597-9267 or by email at [email protected]. He would be happy to hear from you.

GOOD LUCK & GOOD SELLING!!