Are any of these goals a priority for your marketing and sales teams:
- Strengthen alignment between marketing and sales
- Prevent leads from falling between the cracks
- Increase lead to opportunity conversion
- Improve the customer experience
One way to drive improvements across all four goals: improve your lead-to-sales handoff with easy-to-implement communication enhancements. Here are our tips to perfect your lead handoff process.
Clear communication
“Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success”.
Paul J. Meyer
Evaluate communication between your marketing, tele team, and sales team and identify areas that could benefit from adding checkpoints or SLAs. Pay close attention to:
Introductions: As new members or vendors join your team, host an introductory meeting to level set on how leads are developed, what to expect from each lead, and helpful tips around lead engagement. Schedule these meetings every quarter with pertinent members from each team to keep this from falling off your radar when things get hectic.
A central point of contact: One person from each team designated as the contact person for any questions that come up facilitates continued communication across the board.
Hosted appointments
Hosted appointments are an excellent way to get everyone up to speed and improve the customer experience. A warm introduction and quick recap from the lead development representative cut down on repetitiveness for the customer and allow your lead development team to observe firsthand how sales conversations progress (which helps them improve future leads). If a “no-show” happens, the lead development team can immediately work for a quick reschedule.
Seek Feedback
A regular feedback loop allows you to make targeted optimizations to your process, messaging, and lead quality while strengthening your marketing and sales alignment. Encourage a quick feedback call or email immediately after an appointment in which the sales representative can share what went well, and what could have been improved, as well as their opinion on the probability of the lead advancing into the pipeline. An alternative option is to send a survey post appointment for the sales representative to communicate any feedback or advice. The goal is to spot immediate areas to improve and optimize, as well as identify which leads show the most promise for conversion to a pipeline opportunity.
Bi-Annual Roundtable
One extra layer of communication is a roundtable discussion between marketing (including the lead development team) and sales. Your lead development team can discuss questions regarding positioning, objection handling, and contact roles. Sales can share lead feedback, including what is most helpful, what situations work well or don’t work, and logistical or quality improvement requests.
Paul J. Meyer, a pioneer of the self-improvement industry, says “Communication – the human connection – is the key to personal and career success”. Our team prioritizes communication and alignment with our partners to drive results with a strong lead-to-sales handoff. Contact us for a strategy session today!
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