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Reading time: 6min
You will read about:
- Too many leads and too few sales opportunities
- Qualifying Leads to Increase Conversion
- The importance of CRM for the commercial area
*This guespost was produced by Luis Lourenço from RD Station CRM.
A few weeks ago, talking to a customer, we identified a situation that was somewhat strange but, at the same time, not unusual: the company's salespeople received ALL marketing-generated leads. In a practical way, the process was something like this:
1 - Marketing generates a landing page about certain material (top, middle or funnel bottom);
2 - The lead converts;
3 - It is sent to the sales CRM
In the case of this client, the volume of leads per seller reached 600 opportunities per month, and the vast majority were not prepared to talk to the seller (not qualified for sales). The problems arising from this, we will list below, but it is important that sales management understand some concepts and applications to be able to increase sales and take advantage of CRM.
Not every lead is an opportunity
According to Marketing Sherpa , 61% of marketers send all generated leads to sales. Perhaps this is the case of the example above and it is one of the big mistakes of inbound sales, after all, not every lead is prepared to buy, not every lead wants to talk to a salesperson and not every lead has the proper profile to talk to the seller of your company.
In some courses at RD University (see here) we show that the lead must go through a short journey before going to the sales team and that, when sending this opportunity prematurely, some problems will arise:
- Leads will be ignored for sales due to poor quality. According to a survey by 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips, 50% of leads that are passed without alignment are ignored by salespeople. That means money going down the drain.
- Salespeople will have an even heavier and demotivating routine: imagine giving the blood to talk to a lot of people unprepared to buy, not hitting targets and still being charged for it?
- Higher cost, lower revenue. After all, you'll need more salespeople, more marketing investment, more calling hours, etc, etc.
CRM like hero?
In philosophy, we say that the "hero" is the protagonist of a catastrophe scenario. After the city is destroyed, with a monster destroying buildings, fires and aliens with super powers smashing cars, when the police fire shots without tickling the villain, a hero appears to save everything and earn the laurels of success. In a less optimistic view, there is only a hero if there is chaos.
No company survives on heroes, because people (except those who live in the New York in the movies) are not willing to live in a world of catastrophe. And the CRM tool, despite being the most important tool a sales team can have, will not be the hero that will save the sales routine. Likewise, the best seller won't be either.
There is no heroism in the company's day-to-day activities. What exists are well-defined and optimally assembled processes. In the case of sales, an enabling environment to generate more revenue in less time. A well-developed sales process, with a CRM, aligned with well-trained sales professionals, will be much more successful than hiring the best salesperson on planet Earth and passing 600 low-qualified leads a month to him to try to hit the target, for example.
Qualification for sales
When should the lead go into sales CRM? When he is prepared, qualified or "raising your hand". This must happen to deliver the best opportunities for sales and the process is done through the nourishment of materials, content and interactions with the customer and through a pre-sales activity , in which the SDR (Sales Development Representative) will raise pains and problems , wishes, company information to identify the ideal profile, etc.
Once this is done, the seller will be able to receive the opportunity in their CRM and, thus, be able to achieve better commercial results.
Complementing the example we gave at the beginning of this article, salespeople won't need to talk to 600 (low-qualified) leads. You can chat (for example) with 100 super qualified leads in the month. And the other 500? Well, as they are not yet qualified and ready to buy, marketing will continue to nurture and gather information before sending it to the seller's CRM.
At the same time, other benefits come in, such as higher conversion rates, better time spent, retention of better sellers, etc.
The CRM that works!
As we said, CRM is a very important tool for the commercial area, regardless of size, qualification of the sales area, marketing, etc. But there are some factors that can hinder the insertion of this type of system in a company: salespeople or managers who do not know the value that the software generates, few management rituals, little knowledge of sales techniques, factors related to the chosen product, etc. But one of the most relevant factors for the use, or not, of this tool, is the commercial process. Or the lack of it.
In the scenario where there is no qualification of leads before sending them to the seller's CRM, the effectiveness of the tool starts to decrease - even though it is perfect for the company, being used successfully, for example, by competitors. After all, with the unregulated entry of opportunities, the entire flow of opportunity management becomes more complex: monitoring of the sales funnel, follow-up, customer relationship, supply of information, collection of metrics, etc.
CRM could take the company to another level of commercial quality, with a well-designed process, sending qualified opportunities, which would generate more relevant information for the seller, company and, why not, for the customer.
CRM s2 Qualification
To qualify leads, you must have specialized tools. To nurture and qualify through marketing, there are automation systems such as RD Station Marketing . In parallel, there are specialized tools in pre-sales and qualification of opportunities by SDRs such as Exact Spotter . Finally, CRM will be used by the sales team.
By having greater control of the generated, nurtured and qualified leads, CRM becomes an optimized tool for what really matters: transforming opportunities into sales. This makes the entire process of implementation and results generation, as well as having more clarity about who to prioritize, when and why, the salesperson will have more control of the sales funnel and follow-up tasks, as well as the manager will have assertiveness in the analytics and metrics.
Conclusion
Companies spend more than 1 trillion dollars a year due to low productivity in marketing and sales ( 101 B2B Marketing and Sales Tips ) and much of this is related to the lack of lead qualification, which ends up generating bad opportunities for sales. On the other hand, the companies that really manage to grow year after year are the ones that have the best designed processes and that use CRM in the most optimized way possible.
As a dependency on each other, the success of the business process depends on CRM, which depends on a good business process. It's a cycle.
Understanding all the details of the process and CRM may not be so simple for those embarking on the first journey of commercial management, but paying attention to some details is essential. Among them, perhaps the most important is the need for good lead qualification before sending them to the seller, and the understanding that sending the right leads, at the right time, to the right person, using the right tools, will certainly be the best path towards year-end goals.
