Driving Value for Sales: The Art in the Science

With Woods out of office last week, somewhere in the Caribbean, with limited WiFi (editorial) access, I thought this would be the perfect time to write my first post.

Let me start by saying I love salespeople. It takes a certain type of person, to get up every day and get hit in the face by a hammer over and over again, and come back for more.

As marketers, one of the best things we can do for sales is provide quality leads on an ongoing basis, and then get their feedback regularly to improve the quality we are providing. There are many strategies and tactics in demand generation to deliver on that promise, but what I have found in working with customers is that sometimes there is "art in the science" in ensuring sales gets the full value of everything that marketing is doing.

Let's talk about a few principles that will help you drive more value for sales.

1. It's all About the Deltas

There is nothing better than change in a stalled sales process. In the life insurance business, sales people talk about tracking "life events" - getting married, having a baby, etc. as critical times to engage a client to sell them more insurance. Well in B2B the concept is the same, but sales people track "business events" instead of life events.

• Make sure when setting up lead scoring dashboards, or campaign reports that you focus on the changes that have occurred instead of an overview
• It is better to error on the side of showing less, but everything is new, than showing more and only 10% have changed

2. Help Make Them Look Good

With all of the conversion analysis, website tracking , and Co-dynamic lead scoring algorithms out there, you sometimes forget that one of the best things you can do for sales, is help them deliver messaging in a professional and relevant way to their prospects. One of the best tactics to do this is to use Agent Personalized email campaigns - that brand the campaign as if the sales person sent it themselves. Sure, statistics show that you will get a 30% increase in opens and up to a 300% increase in click-throughs, but here are two other benefits that will really help you with sales:

• They stay top of mind with their prospects with value-add content, which will lead to more phone connections or call-backs
• And get this - they will get inbound calls. Forget web visits, forget form submissions, they will actually get inbound calls which lead to qualified opportunities. Now that is something that sales will get excited about

3. Match the Salesperson's Routine

If you are planning on sending real-time alerts, or lead reports to a salesperson, it is important to allow reps to receive this information based on their own daily or weekly routines. Matching a salesperson routine will drive rapid adoption of valuable information. Reports sent to them too frequently or infrequently, quickly are ignored - so spend the extra time to find out what will work best for each rep.