Most Effective Way To Get B2B Marketing Leads to Meet with Sales People
In an earlier post, I explained why B2B Marketing Leads Don’t Respond to Salespeople. Be sure to read this post before proceeding because you must understand the problem before you can appreciate the solution!
Now I’m going to explain HOW to get marketing leads to meet with salespeople, which will provide a major boost to your growth goals.
Here are the critical steps!
1) Marketers must incorporate interactive assessments into all of their lead generation campaigns.
You are probably asking what is an interactive assessment? An interactive assessment is a form of interactive content that is designed to collect detailed information on a prospects business challenges and give them instant insights & recommendations at the same time. An assessment can have 10-20 questions centered on a specific topic that is relevant to your buyer. For example, a security software company could create an assessment called “Cyber Risk Capability”. When the prospect completes the assessment, they instantly receive a personalized scorecard that includes analysis, recommendations, and other security data points like comparisons to others in their industry.
2) Leads who complete the assessment must be passed to Sales for immediate follow up. No nurturing required!
Prospects that take assessments are naturally curious and are very interested in learning how their business is performing. These are grade A quality leads. Sales is now in a position to add more value to this prospect by sharing insights based on their assessment results.
3) Sales reps can view the prospect’s automated scorecard to see what they are doing well, what they are struggling with, and what opportunities exist to help them.
The assessment results provide the sales rep with the critical CONTEXT and INSIGHT into the prospect’s business. This is the missing information identified in the prior post. The rep is now in position to add tremendous value by sharing additional insights, analysis, and recommendations that are PERSONALIZED to for the prospect.
4) With this context and extra information, Sales engage in a more personalized follow-up offering to share additional insights & recommendations.
Unlike the email shared in the prior post, a follow up email can now provide a tremendous amount of value to the prospect. The email can be personalized even further highlighting some of the assessment results, and the rep is viewed as a subject matter expert with information the prospect WANTS. The prospect will take this meeting to keep learning!
5) Sales reps must tailor the conversation with the prospect.
Better sales conversations produce better results! The rep is able to focus the conversation on the top need areas identified in the assessment. This allows the conversation to advance quickly and uncover the best sales opportunities. The trust built during this process has shown to accelerate the sales cycle & increase win rates.
So to summarize:
1) Using interactive assessments in marketing is effective because it adds the most value to prospects and identifies highly engaged people that are most interested and curious about how they are performing.
2) A big trend in marketing is to provide personalized experiences because that is what people are expecting. Interactive assessments provide personalization and immediacy, another element people desire today!
3) The assessment educates the prospect and frames the problem. These two components build TRUST with the prospect and positions your firm and sales reps as thought leaders.
4) The rep and prospect have high-value conversations from the beginning which has proven to increase MQL to opportunity conversion rates, accelerate the sales cycle, and increase win rates.
5) Marketing is now providing leads that the sales team LOVES.
Who is the hero now? 😉 Remember it is a team effort!