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What are some best practices allowing sales to step into a sales conversation more gracefully?
The hand off of leads to sales can be problematic. What can be done to insure a graceful transition from marketing to sales?
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3 Answers
Dan this is an interesting question and certainly one that is important to address given the variety of methods leads are delivered from marketing to sales. I think the process, or conversation starter may change depending on the hand off process.
Is the lead simply a scored inquiry based on demographic information? Does it include digital behavior scored information like that provided by a marketing automation platform? Perhaps they are qualified via an inside sales team or contracted tele-qualification firm before being delivered to the field sales rep? What is the timing between the most recent interaction and the “handoff” you are asking about?
All of those factors can affect how a sales person might open the conversation. That being said, there are some basics that can be followed when making this call most of which center around preparation, preparation, preparation.
Currently the means are available to become familiar with the person, company and industry being contacted relatively quickly. Once a rep understands the prospect landscape and has an idea of the potential issues this lead may be facing, they are ready to make the discovery/qualification call.
I use the acronym I.P.A. as a mental reminder for call structure. Those letters stand for Issues, Process, and Answers, which I think of as follows:
Issues (Business Pain): Gain insight and confirm the issues this prospect is facing or trying to solve. Confirm and quantify impact to the prospect, to their management, and organization. There are plenty of methodologies out there to help instruct on questioning technique. The bottom line is get an understanding of the business pain, who it hurts and the lost value for those stakeholders.
Process (Buying Process): This is key – before the sales person starts solving the issues with their products or services, they should understand the buying process for that particular individual. Determine the sequence of events for that person to lead you to the “promised land”. If they meet the reasonable-person test and are typical of your products purchase process the sales person can decide if this is a lead they should pursue personally or kick back for further nurturing and education.
Answers (Solutions to Pain): If the sales person is satisfied that the business exchange is fair they should answer by building vision of their products or services solving the issues. They can begin to confirm an evaluation/purchasing plan and offer to deliver information that will help the prospect move through the purchasing process and their opportunity through the sales pipeline.
Of course, this gracefulness that you are inquiring about is much more complex than those three steps and dependant on many factors, not the least of which is the tactfulness with which the sales rep conducts the call. Overall, I believe that the I.P.A. call strategy helps a sales person protect their primary assets, their time and company resources.
At the end of the day, the objective of a call is to gain movement forward or disqualification so the rep can move on to more qualified prospects.
I hope this answer starts a bit of discussion on the topic as I am always interested in learning how other people solve this challenging milestone in the sales process. Thank you for posting the topic.
Good Luck and Great Selling!
ScottyB
Scott raises some interesting points. But what I'm missing is the complete cycle from beginning to end - from marketing through sales. Buyers don't care which is which, what they want is a valuable experience that helps them solve their problem.
In my experience, one of the reasons that sales has trouble stepping into the conversation gracefully is that they actually have no idea of the story that the leads have participated in thus far with marketing. Additionally, marketing doesn't take the time or make the effort to understand how salespeople approach the issue.
It's very hard to coordinate a "graceful" transition when both sides aren't working together or communicating well.
The best way to solve this is for marketing to research, understand and plan for the information/content that buyers (use personas) will need across the entirety of the buying process. Then - and very importantly - they need to discuss what they've planned with salespeople to discover any gaps or skewed perceptions and correct them.
In client projects I do this via interviews with salespeople. What I find is that most salespeople are interested in anything that's going to be helpful to them. (Pretty much like buyers, right!) They have insights that are invaluable for marketing to know and incorporate into their programs.
If you just start with these steps you'll discover opportunities for marketing and sales to work together beneficially and create wins for both sides - but most importantly for creating a better buyer experience from beginning to end (sale).
Hi Dan! On the strategic level, best practice is to assure flexibility in the opportunity development process so that sales can get involved at ANY appropriate point. Worst practice is to mandate that sales wait until marketing “blesses” the lead. In engineered products and many other sectors, the vendor whose sales people participate early and directly gets to “spec” the procurement and often wins the deal.
On the tactical level, the single most important best practice is for sales people to pay attention to the marketing communications that have come before, so they neither re-hash nor contradict the prior prospect interactions ... rather, they influence and advance.
Here is how a client’s sales rep opened such a conversation this very morning: “Ms Prospect, first things first … thank you for participating with my colleague (name) and for considering us. From the communication history, it certainly appears we have a good business fit. So my role is to step forward with you, providing specific guidance and recommendations. Will that be OK?” The response: “Yes, indeed.”
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