IMPACT Inbound Marketing Agency]
Services
TAYA

They Ask, You Answer Mastery

A coaching & training program that drives unmatched sales & marketing results.

Sales

Sales Performance Mastery

Improve the competencies and close rates of your sales organization.

Web design

Website Mastery

Web design, development & training for your team.

HubSpot

HubSpot Mastery

Everything you need to get the most from HubSpot.

AI Mastery

AI Enablement Mastery

Unlock the power of AI in all aspects of your revenue operations.

Discover how IMPACT’s services can help take your business to the next level. Book a free 30-minute coaching session Book a free 30-minute coaching session
Learning Center
Learning Center

Learning Center

Free resources to help you improve the way you market, sell and grow your business.

[NEW] The Endless Customers Podcast is now available everywhere. Learn how to earn trust & win more customers in the age of AI. Listen Now Listen Now

Free Assessment: How does your sales & marketing measure up?

Close Bottom Left Popup Offer

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.
Carolyn Edgecomb

By Carolyn Edgecomb

May 13, 2013

Topics:

Checklists
Subscribe
Join 40,000+ sales and marketing pros who receive our weekly newsletter.

Get the most relevant, actionable digital sales and marketing insights you need to make smarter decisions faster... all in under five minutes.

Thanks, stay tuned for our upcoming edition.
Checklists

Sales and Marketing Alignment Checklist: Coordination is Key

Carolyn Edgecomb

By Carolyn Edgecomb

May 13, 2013

Sales and Marketing Alignment Checklist: Coordination is Key

 

Sales and Marketing Alignment ChecklistGenerating a lead is great news for any company, but the level excitement will depend on what type of lead you have.  Is it a marketing qualified lead, or is your lead sales ready?  If your marketing and sales team are not on the same page, it will be very difficult to nurture this lead and convert said lead into a customer.


The key to successfully nurturing and converting your leads is having effective coordination between your marketing and sales teams. Below is a checklist that will help you get your sales and marketing teams on the same page.


Sales and Marketing Alignment Checklist:


1. Agree on Quality Lead Identification Statement


If your sales and marketing teams have a varying definition of a quality lead for your company, it’ll be impossible to sell or market effectively. Both teams need to meet and identify your ideal prospects together based on demographics and behavior. This ensures your marketing team is generating the right type of leads so that your sales team can close at a higher rate.


2. Identify Actions that Represent Sales Readiness


Once you’ve determined what makes a qualified lead, how do you know when a lead is sales ready? Work with your sales team in order to identify what makes a lead sales ready, and also which content is currently assisting in the sales process. Consider closely monitoring page views, email clicked, and conversions to identify sales readiness.


3. Utilize Lead Scoring


One of the best ways for your sales team to separate the good leads from the bad is through lead scoring. This enables you to attach a point value to specific actions performed by your leads or certain demographics that they meet. This ensures that only the most qualified, sales-ready leads are being delivered to your sales team so no time is wasted on the phone.


4. Set an SQL Goal


In order to achieve your business goals on a monthly basis, you’ll need to identify how many SQL’s need to be delivered to your sales team. How many leads do you generate each month? How many become opportunities? Customers? Use these numbers in order to identify how many SQL’s are needed to achieve your business goals.


5. Nurture MQL’s


By now you know that not all leads are sales-ready. This is where marketing comes in. Educate and nurture your marketing qualified leads to help push them down the sales funnel. Utilize workflows to send your leads automated emails based on their interests and activity on your site.


6.Implement a CRM


Implementing a CRM helps track and measure your sales activities. A CRM provides you with easy access to lead intelligence for sales, better sales and marketing alignment, can help sales prioritize your pipeline, as well as help you initiate closed-loop reporting.


7. Integrate Marketing Software and CRM


If you have marketing software and a CRM, you can actually integrate the two, allowing them to talk to each other. By integrating HubSpot and a CRM like Salesforce, not only are the leads automatically entered, it allows lead intelligence to easily pass between them. Known as closed-loop reporting, this allows you to track and identify how leads came to your site, their actions and behaviors and at what point they became a lead.


8. Setup Sales & Marketing Reports


Once you’ve developed your sales and marketing goals, it’s important that you track the progress of your sales and marketing teams against the goals you’ve set for the month.


Your marketing report should include a lead waterfall graph. Your sales report should include two different graphs; one for monitoring your sales teams speed to follow-up with leads and the other monitoring the number of leads that sales is following up with. If you’re not setting up these reports, you won’t know whether sales and marketing are on track to hit their goals. Don’t just set your goals and check them at the end of the month. You should proactively be checking and adjusting your strategies in order to identify problems and address them early.


9. Implement CRM Best Practices


To get the most out of your CRM, it’s essential that your team is fully trained to master the software. Once this is achieved, ensure best practices are followed, which means staying on top of lead statuses, opportunity stages, and all client notes are accurately recorded. This is critical, as accurate information passed between sales and marketing also ensures a more powerful campaign.


10. Open the Lines of Communication


In order to meet your sales and marketing goals for the month, both teams need to continually work together to identify problems in the sales process and where they originate from. Sales knows what closes deals, therefore there should be an open line of communication in order for marketing to adjust their content and overall campaign to assist in the sales process.


Want to see more checklists like this???


To see our complete inbound marketing checklist, make sure you download the free ebook below! Trust us, it’s our best ebook yet!

Free Assessment:

How does your sales & marketing measure up?
Take this free, 5-minute assessment and learn what you can start doing today to boost traffic, leads, and sales.