4 ways to optimize sales from inbound marketing leads

That title may have been a bit misleading. You see, there’s one sure-fire way to optimize sales from inbound marketing leads — it’s to close the gap between your marketing and your sales in the first place.

There seems to be this unspoken but nonetheless prevalent inclination for large companies to have a sales team that is separate from their marketing team. In the real world, that might make sense. In the cyber realm, it’s a huge waste. It’s a 24% waste, according to SalesForce.com — that’s how much more revenue a company that has successfully merged marketing and sales together makes over a company that has not.

So, let’s talk about the real topic here: 4 ways to effectively streamline sales and marketing to make the most out of your inbound marketing leads.

Relearn

Let’s first recognize and admit a simple fact: the customer journey will never be the same. In traditional marketing and sales, customers can begin their journey by talking to a sales rep. Online, on average, customers are 60% into your funnel before they even interact with anyone on your team.

In the traditional paradigm, the talks begin much earlier. In the new and ever-changing paradigm, the talks might not even occur at all — a consumer can go from interested to checkout with just clicks of the mouse. You need to relearn the consumer journey, so you can better anticipate the personal touch points where your team can come in and guide a lead to a close.

Automate

Again, consumers can go from point A to closed without ever talking to any of your sales people — this means your marketing needs to be sufficiently automated to handle any consumers that effortlessly slide through the sales funnel. You wouldn’t want them falling out of their gleeful slide and ending up elsewhere.

Another important facet of the new consumer journey you need to relearn is that it’s actually lengthier when expanded to its full extent. Furthermore, consumers can enter the journey through various phases and channels. Your inbound marketing must face the challenge of automating its sales-ready tools wherever leads may enter into the journey. One way you can do this is by automatically segmenting leads based on captured lead data. Based on lead segmentation, you can then send them automatically through the proper phases and channels of your sales funnel — always showing the right marketing message at the right time.

Integrate

Obviously, when you integrate your marketing with your sales, you also need to integrate your lead generation with your CRM. This provides several benefits, some of the most significant include:

• Reduction in manpower — your leads and CRM database are housed in one place. No need to search two separate databases and move an entry when it stops being a lead and becomes a customer.
• Reduction in technical requirements — two databases are not equal to one database holding two verticals. One database is generally much easier on the technical requirements. Ask your tech team.
• Reduction in errors — both technical and man-made. Human errors and technical loss of data are the two most common reasons for data corruption. Minimize it through integration.

Track

If you have Google Analytics or Hubspot, it’s plain to see how tracking and monitoring helps. The effect of merging inbound marketing and sales, however, is not like adding two factors, it’s like multiplying them. You don’t simply track two streams at once, you need to track streams relative to each other. For instance, you need to track efforts against revenue, not just leads.

Relearn, automate, integrate, and track. These aren’t just pretty words for inbound marketing and sales.

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