Often times a business will speak about driving new business as sales and marketing. While this is common, they have a very different purpose. They should be treated separately because if you don’t you will be losing a valuable part of your customer acquisition.
The role of marketing is to provide traffic to the sales organization. It’s important to differentiate the pieces because to get that sale the customer needs to be presold.
The role of sales is to use a process to take those qualified leads from the marketing and close them to make money. Many times these processes are going to be handled by the same person or the same department, depending on how big you are. The important part is to realize that it’s a process with multiple steps, and if done correctly, your conversion rate will be enough to maintain the money you are spending on marketing.
When your customer is first introduced to your brand that person is going to be called an information qualified lead. They just want to find out more about what your have to offer or what your company does. This gives you as a marketer a chance to serve this person more ads and the nurture this curious person with the reasons your company is a good fit for them.
As you serve this person more ads through social media or an email sequence, this person becomes something called a marketing qualified lead. A marketing qualified lead may not be ready to buy yet but they are interested enough to hear from you on a regular basis. The goal with a marketing qualified lead is to keep your company on the top of their mind. You want to build authority with this lead so when they are ready to make a purchase, you are the one they think of.
There will come a point in the relationship with this person that they tell you “Hey, I’m ready for more information.” and this is to point when they become a sales qualified lead. This is when you’re going to be able to pass this person from the marketing department to the sales department.
While much of the marketing process is through some sort of automation, the sales process is going to be a bit more manual. When that’s through phone calls, emails, or other tools that are used to reaffirm the authority of the company.
Many times there is going to be a disagreement between marketing and sales on how qualified a lead is. Marketing is going to feel like they are sending super hot leads to sales and they aren’t closing them. While sales is going to say marketing is sending cold leads. This is where the magic happens, your organization is then able to work together to figure out the best place to hand off the leads during the process. Working together as a collaboration is the best way to make everyone perform at the top of their game.
