Marketing and sales are different animals but are part of the same process and ecosystem. Together they fit nicely under the common phrase of a lead generation journey.
The goal of plotting a journey is to gain agreement on a process and find quality leads and to nurture them to success. In 2019, the rules keep changing, the tactics are abundant, but the basics are still simple.
You are always moving opportunities from hello to thank you for your business.
How you acquire new customers and follow up with them needs coordination, collaboration, and a shared connection. When marketing and sales aren’t working together, good luck with achieving your growth goal.
Through my marketing consulting practice, I find common challenges across how businesses manage and organize their approach. Often, there hasn’t been a strategic meeting of the minds to draw a picture of what they want to achieve. I find that starting with a drawing is the best way to gain consensus and begin. Remember, lead generation is a never-ending process. Once you have a new customer, nurturing that relationship is also a part of capture long-term value.
Observations from the Outside
- WHITEBOARD JOURNEYS: When the marketing and sales leaders can sit down with a whiteboard and plot the journey of a new customer, you can see how interconnection creates magic. Take the time to sketch out the multiple ways someone becomes aware, gains interest, builds a desire to learn more and then takes action. AIDA is the acronym, but the whiteboard sketch drives where you spend money, energy, and time. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but drawing a picture with your colleagues is a force multiplier.
- LIFETIME VALUE: What is a customer worth over time? If the marketing and sales leaders agree that a customer’s value over several years is X, then you can determine what it is worth to acquire that customer. Estimating the value of a customer in dollars also allows you to create a math equation that says, to achieve our goals in the next twelve months, if we spend X dollars and gain Y revenue, we will be successful. And, that to meet our multi-year growth needs, we need to monitor our assumptions carefully. If you don’t agree on the lifetime value of a customer, it is hard to determine how much to invest in this process.
- OWNERSHIP MATTERS: Who owns marketing and who owns sales? Although acquiring new business is one process, you need two dedicated leaders focused on each discipline. If you dilute the effort for sales across too many people, you don’t get the full value of your marketing or sales investment. The marketing and sales leads need to play nicely together – but you must have each of them focused on perfecting their disciplines and putting 100% of their effort against their mutual goals.
Do you have a clear picture of how your lead flow works? Perhaps it is time to start with a whiteboard session to plot the journey.
Get out your dry erase markers.
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. Visit my website at www.themarketingsage.com The conversation is free, and we can explore working together.
Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash
