7 Tips to Improve Sales Follow-up & Close More Leads

If you are like most B2B marketers, lead generation is at top of your priority list. But as you may already know, generating tons of “leads” doesn’t guarantee sales will follow.

Does the sales team either ignore your hard-won leads or complain about their quality? Do you ever wonder was the lead even contacted? If so, what’s the status?  Could you have helped move it along by going deeper in the sales cycle?

This chronic lack of visibility has a snowball effect of making it challenging for marketers to measure their effectiveness and understand their return on marketing investment (ROMI). So what can be done about it? 

Here's 7 Tips to Improve Sales Follow-up

1. Get buy in from sales team on your "sales ready" lead definition
2. Provide qualification information for each sales lead
3. Qualify and Distribute sales ready leads immediately
4. Communicate hand off to sales person
5. Measure sales pursuit - If lead not followed up it will be pulled / reassigned
6. Regularly close the loop -what gets measured gets done
7. Sales management must also audit and track rep follow-up

How often do you close the loop? I’ve found the most powerful way to improve sales follow-up on marketing generated leads is doing more frequent sales and marketing huddles.

Read Collaboration Huddles and 35 Other Ways to Improve Sales and Marketing Teamwork

Finally, if you’re using these tips already and still feel that your marketing and sales teams are working against each other instead of being on the same team, you could have some challenges with office politics read on.

MarketingSherpa just published an interview with Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez from a marketing view point and Barry Trailer, Co-Founder, CSO Insights who brings a sales perspective. Together Phil and Barry share seven other strategies to get both sides talking including how to:

• Model the sales/marketing funnel
• Develop a common vocabulary
• Create a closed-loop reporting process

MarketingSherpa: Overcoming Office Politics - 7 Strategies to Generate & Close More Leads.

Related posts:

Closed Loop Feedback: The Missing Lead Generation Huddle
Closed-Loop Marketers More Likely to Reach ROMI Goals
Podcast: Using Closed Loop Feedback to Boost Lead Generation ROI