Is your sales team focused on lead generation?

In small B2B firms, employees are often responsible for juggling a number of priorities, and they can get confused as to what their primary focus should be. Some companies do not have enough resources to fully staff sales and marketing departments. However, marketing activities still need to be conducted, which means they fall to the sales team. This can spread salespeople pretty thin because they are responsible for employing a variety of lead generation techniques, as well as following up with prospects and ultimately closing deals. With so many tasks assigned to a small group of people, it’s highly likely that some things will be overlooked, and revenue gains may suffer as a result.

There are some benefits to having your sales representatives conduct Internet lead generation. Because they are the employees responsible for closing deals and generating revenue, they generally have a good idea of what makes a qualified lead. This can streamline the sales process and help your team move leads through the revenue funnel more quickly. However, lead generation, nurturing, pitching and finalizing contracts is a lot of responsibility for your sales employees. If they are good at generating leads, they may not be as thorough when it comes to closing deals, and this can impact the long-term success of your organization.

Refining processes can improve revenue generation

Having your sales employees do the work of two departments is not a sustainable solution. You have a few choices for how to handle this problem. One way to supplement your sales team is by using your website for lead generation, according to Business 2 Community. Internet lead generation can take some of the pressure away from sales reps so they aren’t stretched too far. Implementing an online marketing system can help you refine your website content and increase the number of visitors who convert into leads. Content marketing can significantly boost the number of quality leads you’re able to attract.

However, this would add another task for your already-busy sales team. Someone needs to craft relevant content for lead generation. To avoid losing out on potential sales, it may be best to turn one or more of your sales employees into dedicated marketers, hire an additional sales rep and support both groups with a marketing automation solution.

This may not seem like the most cost-effective solution, but in the end, having specific marketing and sales employees can help your company generate more revenue and gain new customers. Both lead generation and sales activities should be full-time pursuits, and neither can function optimally if employees are trying to do everything at once. In the end, this strategic move can help your business grow.

Your newly minted marketing employees will already have an idea of what a quality lead for your company looks like, and this can help you avoid the common pitfalls of sales and marketing misalignment. In larger B2B firms, marketers often generate the wrong kinds of leads, and the sales team fails to communicate why it passed up the contacts. Your marketers will already know how to spend their time targeting the most relevant leads, and they will probably have a good idea of the types of content needed to convert these prospects.

Hiring an employee who is highly skilled in sales processes can build on the success of your team. To be effective at closing deals, this worker doesn’t necessarily need to know the intricate details of your lead generation techniques. He or she just has to be able to and when to approach prospects for the best chance of closing a deal. A different range of abilities is needed to communicate with prospects, pitch to them and help them through the negotiations.

Marketing automation can support both departments’ operations

For marketing and sales teams to work together effectively, they need a shared platform that allows them to integrate their efforts and maintain a set of shared metrics. Both teams need to have a single, unified view of your company’s customers, Andre Golsorkhi, a ClickZ contributor, wrote. This also means agreeing on what constitutes a qualified lead. Your sales employees should not be wasting their time pursuing prospects who aren’t ready to commit to a contract.

Marketing automation can be highly useful for sales because it’s easy to integrate with existing customer relationship management software. This allows salespeople to see when prospects have interacted with materials sent over by the marketing team. An integrated marketing system can also make it easier for your marketers to create and publish content. This advanced software can simplify many tasks for both sales and marketing employees by reducing the number of repetitive tasks they must do. This can allow your entire operation to run more efficiently and focus on the assignments that really matter.