Last month, Jon Plant, Senior Program Director, posted a blog titled Lead Generation – Closing the Loop with Sales. In it, he highlighted a topic near and dear to my heart as the Lead Quality Manager for one of TeleNet largest clients. My job description dictates that I not only have regular contact and interaction with the sales folks in receipt of the leads generated by TeleNet, but also that I monitor on an ongoing basis the progress of our leads through the sales cycle via direct access to the CRM tool utilized by our client sales organization. Constant access to both the people and the systems to which our leads are routed has been of unbelievable benefit to our organization as well as to our client relationship. Not only do we have a direct view to our successes, we also have a mechanism by which we can identify areas for improvement, whether it be with regard to product quality or processes. This week, I wanted to touch on some of the ways TeleNet has leveraged our alignment with our client sales organizations to improve our products and foster tight partnerships with some of our long term clients.
What are we doing right? Successes!! Building a relationship with sales allows a mechanism for some positive reinforcement – and I think we could all use more positive reinforcement in our lives, right? Anecdotal feedback is a great way to keep your teams motivated in what can sometimes be a monotonous job. Getting and sharing it is a great way to keep everyone motivated to pick up the phone again and again. Statistics regarding wins is even better!! Tangible, measurable results like that can really keep morale high. The other benefit to those kinds of metrics is an understanding of what working so that those behaviors can be encouraged, reinforced, and rewarded.
What are we missing? Isn’t everything perfect already? Well, almost – but not always. We are constantly adjusting and tweaking our product to evolve with the ever changing world of sales. Any time there an issue with a lead we’ve generated, the sales folks know to call yours truly. One throat to choke, if you will. Providing sales with a resource dedicated solely to them only serves to strengthen the relationship between Marketing and Sales. Plus, acting as a single point of contact for sales inquiries regarding opportunities we’ve passed along provides me with a big picture view to discern what changes might be necessary across the account vs those that might be a simple individual problem. Of course, a full understanding of the extent of an issue allows us to nip it in the bud in a most effective manner.
What can we improve upon? Processes. I don’t know about you, but just the word process can sometimes make me cringe. They are a necessary evil for any successful business and/or business relationship. If they are efficient, they are life-saving. If they have holes, they can ruin lives (joking). Having a complete understanding of lead handoff processes is great, but the closed loop view to the process from beginning to end is the only way that one can assess how efficient the process actually is. A view to your clients’ processes, whether it be via their CRM or regular meetings with sales, provides the opportunity to not only fix broken processes but also to foster tight- knit, long term partnerships.