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Stopping the Massacre of MQLs Going off the Cliff
- 1. #INBOUND17 Stopping the Massacre of MQLs Going off the Cliff M E L I S S A A L V A R E S D I R E C T O R O F M A R K E T I N G , S P A R K R O C K @ M E L I S O N I T An Evolution of Sales & Marketing Alignment
- 2. #INBOUND17
- 3. #INBOUND17 E V O L U T I O N T O S A L E S & M A R K E T I N G A L I G N M E N T
- 4. #INBOUND17 My Lofty Vision Building a lean mean LeadGen machine at a small, start-up style software company in Toronto
- 5. #INBOUND17 1. 10 year old company 2. 30 employees, 85 customers, $5M in annual revenue 3. Focus on the Nonprofit Sector 4. Dabble in content marketing 5. 1 – 2 Inbound leads per month 6. 1 strong BDR that was retiring, 2 new sales reps 7. 1 Marketing Coordinator 8. Lofty vision to double in employees and revenue in 3 years WHAT I WAS GETTI NG I NTO
- 7. #INBOUND17 1. Implemented Hubspot 2. Blog, then blog some more 3. Build more TOFU content 4. Get Social 5. Go where our prospects go I NCREASE LEADS
- 8. #INBOUND17 The Result? Exhaustion Minimal increase in leads Effort payback low
- 10. #INBOUND17 1. Reduced our vertical focus 2. Spent more time on our personas (A Hubspot I told you so) 3. Quality over Quantity and re-purpose where we can 4. Get Social 5. Go where our prospects go NARROW FOCUS
- 11. #INBOUND17 The Result? Lots more leads Marketing fist pumps Sales still complaining – huh?
- 13. #INBOUND17 1. Understand sales process deeply 2. Build lead definitions that worked for our company 3. Timing is everything when it comes to lead handoff 4. Right people with the right metrics 5. Systems are key REFI NI NG THE LEAD PROCESS
- 14. #INBOUND17 OUR LEAD PROCESS INBOUND SEO SOFTWARE REVIEW SITES LEAD BID SITES ASSOCIATIONS SOCIAL MEDIA L E A D F I L L O U T F O R M M Q L S C O R E O R R E Q U E S T C O N T A C T No response and unable to qualify or disqualify Disqualified - Wrong size/type or organization B D R Within 1hr S Q L G O O D T A R G E T BDR Nurture until BANT with 6months to buy SALES OPPTY WIN! LOSS
- 15. #INBOUND17 The Result? Cleared a backlog of 300+ MQLs BDRs in place to nurture SQLs Sales still complaining – huh?
- 16. #INBOUND17 It’s all about the money4
- 17. #INBOUND17 1. Measure the same stuff 2. B2B needs to think about Accounts, not leads 3. Put dollar values on everything 4. Report, Report, Report SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE
- 18. #INBOUND17
- 19. #INBOUND17 The Result? Identify funnel problems sooner Lots of process improvements Sales sits with Marketing at lunch
- 20. #INBOUND17 Marketing needs to be all the way down the funnel 5
- 21. #INBOUND17 1. Shared goals 2. Inbound approach in sales approach 3. Content is still King 4. If you build it, they won’t come. Drag them. 5. ABM and Territory Plans 6. No such thing as communication over-kill BDR & SALES ENABLEMENT
- 22. 22 2 2
- 23. 23 2 3 TERRI TORY # 1 TERRI TORY # 2 T O P 3 0 A C C O U N T S S a l e s R e p t o c r e a t e o w n 4 - 5 D e a l s + 4 0 O p p s f r o m B D R $ 1 M A C V S O F T W A R E ACCOUNT EXECS A B M L i s t o f 6 0 0 A c c o u n t s $ 2 M A C V P I P E L I N E 4 0 D e a l s BDR I N B O U N D L E A D S 1 0 D e a l s $ 5 0 0 K A C V P I P E L I N E T O P 3 0 A C C O U N T S S a l e s R e p t o c r e a t e o w n 4 - 5 D e a l s + 4 0 O p p s f r o m B D R $ 1 M A C V S O F T W A R E A B M L i s t o f 6 0 0 A c c o u n t s $ 2 M A C V P I P E L I N E 4 0 D e a l s
- 24. #INBOUND17
- 25. #INBOUND17
- 26. #INBOUND17
- 27. #INBOUND17
- 28. #INBOUND17
- 29. #INBOUND17
- 30. #INBOUND17 • Aligning sales and marketing could generate 208% more marketing revenue for your company. • Companies that ensure sales and marketing teams align are up to 67% better at closing deals. • Organizations that successfully align sales and marketing achieve 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher win rates.” I T’ S WORTH I T Source: Digital Marketing Institute
- 31. #INBOUND17 HAS I T WORKED FOR US?
- 32. #INBOUND17#INBOUND17 THANK YOU @ M E L I S O N I T M A L V A R E S @ S P A R K R O C K . C O M
Editor's Notes
- Before I start, I’d like to get an idea of why you decide to come to this session today. I’m 100% sure it’s not because you’ve heard of my company before, or read my books (I’ve have none) or watch my YouTube sensation TedTalk (I don’t have one). But I’m thinking that you maybe related to the topic of leads not being follow up by sales. How many people here are in Marketing? In Sales? How many marketers here feel like sales doesn’t follow up with the leads you are sending them and that frustrates the hell out of you? How many people in sales feel like that herd deserves to go over the cliff since the leads are all crap? I think this is a very common problem at most organizations.
- So today my goal is to share with all of you the journey my marketing team has been on in the attempt of finding alignment with sales. I think when I first submitted this session idea it said something about a loving sales/marketing relationship. Well, I’m not sure we are there, or really if we will ever get there completely. But we have evolved a TON in the last 2 years that have taken us from a very primitive ‘send every new lead to sales and they’ll turn it to a deal” to a place where we are mostly aligned and continually working to improve our processes. It really is survival of the fittest when it comes to marketing ideas, some do well and we kept them, others very quickly died off. Misalignment significantly impacts revenue with lost sales and wasted marketing outlay costing companies $1 trillion a year…lack of alignment leads to the waste of 60-70% of B2B content and a failure to convert 79% of marketing leads into sales.
- So let’s start at the beginning . Little bit about myself and how I started at Sparkrock
- My team of 2 people were exhausted. I had to ]Netflix and Chill….but in the literal sense where I had to veg out on mindless tv. We were writing blogs, creating content trying to get it out on social media and looking for any way to get more eyes on our content. We saw leads increase. Mostly to things like our TOFU webinars and content pieces, but it wasn’t enough.
- Our leads per month jumped to about 100.We were getting a ton of leads and MQLs that we’d send over to sales and we were super excited. However, sales was always still grumbling about leads and saying they had nothing to work on. How could this be?
- With this new process in place, we had a BDR go in and clear up the over 300 MQls that had fallen off the cliff. The new rule is that you can only be an MQL for 2 weeks, and then you either go back to a lead, or move to an SQL that BDR wants to continually nurture. We did find out that a lot of the MQLs weren’t good. But since marketing wasn’t receiving that feedback we hadn’t made any adjustments. But sales was STILL complaining that we weren’t “aligned”.
- What Marketing and Sales Can Do to Ensure Alignment Enough about the challenges. Let’s explore some action items for the marketing side: Gain agreement on the technical aspects of L2R. The ideal structure will combine a great deal of flexibility for field sales reps with maximum control by the marketing department (not the other way around), and ensure that relevant information about all prospects is captured — all prospect and customer data belongs to the company, and not to the individual sales rep. Go on a sales call, listen to sales calls, attend sales meetings, join your sales colleagues at trade shows, and anything else you can do to understand what prospects are really saying. Socialize together (but not too much!). It’s hard to be critical of people you know and like. Try to give your sales counterparts what they want – but don’t be seen as order takers. Over communicate. Never take it for granted that the folks in sales know or care what you are doing. Avoid surprises like your sales teams learning about a big campaign after you’ve already launched it. Reduce complexity. Stop it already with introducing a bunch of new (and complicated) technology that adds to the workload but often doesn’t produce results. Start by reading this article by Hank Barnes, VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Group. If you are in sales, you can: Stop blaming marketing when you don’t produce. Specify exactly what you believe constitutes a qualified lead, because this definition will drive much of the marketing department’s efforts. This criteria also forms part of the service level agreement (SLA) between the marketing and sales departments. Cooperate when they ask you for: a. Help at a trade show b. Information on what is working and not c. Ideas for messaging and new campaigns Help marketing get the word out. They spend a lot of time writing promotional materials, organizing events, etc. You can magnify results with a simple LinkedIn update, tweet or addition to your email signature block. Keep your part of the data updated. Marketing is usually working with a marketing automation system of some type but unless the CRM or sales force automation (SFA) systems are kept up to date, it will be difficult to measure marketing’s contribution to revenue (see below).
- Maybe I’ll have to do a session again next year, since it’s early to tell. We do work MUCH closer now, and in many ways we are moving towards feeling like we are one team. There are still trust issues, but as the goals are so aligned this year behavior is starting to change.