Category: Sales

When we think of a sales funnel, we imagine a single bottleneck – that is, a single source of leads. Normally, in Inbound Marketing, this source is the various forms and lead magnets that Marketing develops. But does it always have to be like this?

Not necessarily. That’s why we need to talk about the Y funnel.

The difference is that the Y sales funnel contemplates two lead inputs: the inbound (marketing) and the outbound (sales). It has this designation precisely because of the two lead generation pathways at the top, which makes the funnel resemble a Y.

Companies that adopt this funnel better coordinate their marketing and sales efforts. The result is increased efficiency in both directions. Both sales prospecting and marketing lead nurturing gain a new lease of life that streamlines leads.

It’s worth reviewing what both do independently to understand how they stand to gain when they work together.

Inbound Marketing vs Sales Outbound 2.0

The Marketing team launches content and campaigns directed toward its target audience. As the materials he produces appeal to pain or a need, his audience is willing to give their contacts in return. 

However, this is far from meaning that leads are ready to talk to sales. Therefore, the other function of Marketing is to nurture contacts with materials and resources until they become a real sales opportunity. 

Already The function of sales is to carry out the so-called prospecting, which is direct contact with the lead to determine if he has the profile, and interest and is at the right time for the purchase. But prospecting isn’t just based on the leads that Marketing generates. Sales reps also have the autonomy to look for leads (on LinkedIn, for example) and make direct contacts of a more commercial nature – this is what creates the second entry in our funnel. 

But, what happens when Marketing has stagnant leads that fail to respond to email sequences? Or what can sales do with immature leads? 

The answer should be clear by now… send it to the other department! And thus make a bridge between the two teams.

From inbound to outbound flow

A lead that once showed interest in various materials, but in the meantime stopped interacting with you, will not be reactivated with more inbound Marketing. You need to make prospecting contact to realize the status.

During the prospecting phase, the rep may discover that a lead is already fully aware of their problem. So the marketing material couldn’t add value! Just waiting for a business contact. The rep’s call reawakens his attention and reestablishes communication.

The opposite can also happen. Finding out that the lead has lost interest, or has hired a competitor. In that case, prospecting is useful because marketing manages to keep the contact list sanitized, that is, with only potential leads.

From outbound to inbound flow

And when does lead enter through outbound? What happens if sales happen to start a conversation with a company that is interested, but doesn’t have the budget available yet? Or that you only think about buying from here for 6 months? You will not simply leave this contact aside, and run the risk of being “fished” by a competitor.

In such cases, you should do the opposite. These contacts move from the outbound flow to the inbound nurturing flow. Thus, you will receive sequences of contacts specially formulated to help you make a more informed decision and consider your company’s proposal when the right time comes.

 

As the lead interacts with the company’s emails, resources, or website, you should assign a lead score. Of course, you don’t have to do this manually: CRM and Marketing automation tools, such as RDStation, make this process easier and a higher score reveals more willingness to buy. This is what Marketing tells you it’s time to forward to sales again.

 

To recap: while inbound marketing has the role of attracting, converting, and nurturing leads, outbound captures leads, communicates directly, and qualifies. Depending on the maturity of the leads, the ideal time to get in touch is detected for a more direct approach. If that moment has not yet come, nutrition is continued. It is the Y funnel that establishes the bridges that support the passage from inbound to outbound flow and vice versa.

 

We have already seen that this relationship is mutually beneficial, but the advantages do not end there.

 

When closing the sale with a customer who received adequate information about the solution through nutrition, the probability of churn is lower. 

 

On the other hand, the Y sales funnel is also very useful for training new marketing and sales employees. By clearly distinguishing between roles, new talent can quickly understand the different stages of the sales process and what their role is.

 

The clear division of processes also facilitates the work of managers. It becomes easier to discern which link in the chain is failing – the professional, team, or stage – or, on the contrary, achieving better results. This “monitoring”, so to speak, allows continuous optimization of the sales process.

 

The Y-funnel reminds both teams that they must unite efforts and strategies, exchange information with each other, and work towards goals that complement each other. This is how the sales process becomes more effective and predictable, which – dare we say – is one of the main objectives of any sales manager or CEO.

If there is a key to business growth, it is this: creating a sales process. I don’t want you to waste another minute without knowing what it is, how, and when to implement a sales process. 

The sales process is a sequence of steps used by the sales department to take a prospect from “lead” to “customer”. In establishing this process, everyone involved and interested in sales, from the sales manager to reps, and even the CEO, uses the same terminology.

Why is this so important? The answer is simple. This sequence structures the sale finds leads and opportunities. Therefore, it allows you to follow the evolution of sales and visualize the progression toward the revenue targets for the month.

At each new step, metrics are established for the sales manager to be able to draw comparisons with previous months and monitor evolution. If the progression indicates that it will fall short of the objectives, it can act surgically in the phase that is harming sales. 

For example, you may notice that sales development reps are not generating enough prospects to move on to closers. In that case, you can work with reps to qualify faster or ask marketing to reinforce inbound marketing.

So if you only see fog when you try to estimate billing at the end of the month, the sales process will bring you the clarity you need to try to change course.

How to create a sales process anyway? First, it is necessary to recognize that the role of sales is not to force a deal but to accompany the consumer throughout his purchase journey.

The modern consumer has access to a lot of information and uses the web to reach companies. The most successful sales processes leverage this inbound flow to create an inbound sales process that helps the customer navigate all stages of their buying journey: need recognition, solution discovery, solution evaluation, and purchase.

In this way, sales reps help customers recognize a problem or an opportunity. Then they help you discover the solutions, evaluate them and make a decision. If you follow this journey, you will align your sales forces with the steps that customers naturally want to take.

When to create the sales process? Ideally, before hiring more sales reps. Establishing the sales process makes it easier to train new talent and get them started in the right direction from the start. In addition, it also allows you to measure the success of each rep and coach when performance falls short of expectations. Or, the contrary, if you identify a sales rep with good performance, investigate and apply it to the team.

You can’t scale a business without a sales process. It is necessary to establish steps that the whole team recognizes, from sales to marketing to managers, and create tailored metrics. Only then will scalable and predictable growth be possible.

Let us guess: you’re here because your sales consistently fall short. And to make matters worse, Marketing and Sales blame each other for missed goals instead of joining forces.

Malaise is relatively common. One in four companies believe these two departments are not aligned, and while 75% believe there is “some sort of alignment”, only 17% believe they are highly aligned.

If you are part of the 83% with an alignment deficit, either you haven’t recognized the true importance of SMarketing (Sales + Marketing), or you have some misconceptions.

The interdependence of Marketing and Sales

The first thing you need to understand is that SMarketing is the joining of efforts of two teams with different skills – and not the transformation of two teams into a homogeneous team. The two functions are different, but we need to recognize theire interdependence.

As Sales are the ones who deal directly with the Customer and are well aware of their pain points, Marketing benefits from these insights to optimize campaigns. On the other hand, as Sales depend on the leads generated by Marketing to achieve their goals, they need to provide Marketing with the necessary information to design the profile of ideal customers and obtain qualified leads.

It becomes clear that, although the secondary objectives are different – ​​as we will see later on – the team’s objective macro, which is to generate revenue for the company, and that is why it is so imperative to join efforts. 

The risks of lack of alignment

The lack of synergy between these sectors inevitably results in a loss of business opportunities. It is estimated that only 37% of misaligned companies achieve sales objectives.

This happens because, without this coordination, Marketing ends up capturing leads with the wrong profile. This generates a domino effect in which sales end up wasting time chasing fruitless deals, while “hot leads” are lost in a pipeline full of unfit leads, that is, those who are not interested in your offer.

The impact of this is negative. The company is faced with very high customer acquisition costs, distant sales targets, and, deep down, an unsustainable business.

Definition of functions and moments of interaction

For there to be synergy, it is necessary to clarify the functions of each team and at what moments they should interact.

Firstly, Marketing communicates with a vast public and its competence is to guide Marketing actions – as much as possible –toward the fit public. Marketing departments often have a limited budget, so they don’t have the luxury of “shooting in all directions” and seeing what works.

So, the role of Marketing is to define buyer personas, identify the channels where they are present, and shape the message in such a way that it captures the attention of people with the pains/needs that the product or service solves.

Then Marketing develops the mechanism that allows you to turn website visits into leads. Producing didactic and informative content and building an image of authority and trust, can transform leads into prospects and pass them on to sales.

When into Sales play, they are no longer dealing with a vast audience, but qualified leads – or sales-qualified leads, SQLs. Marketing has already carried out a filtering process, during which it has educated the customer and established a certain amount of trust so that sales have more chances, but it is the salesperson who finishes.

Here, the Sales specialist uses his arsenal of communication tools – email, telephone, videoconferencing, messaging, social selling, face-to-face meetings, etc. – to gain the prospect’s attention and trust.

Then, the role of the sales specialist is to highlight, with great power of argument, the characteristics, benefits, and value proposition of each product or service and make the connection to the pains that the prospect feels.

Sales and Marketing Alignment

We’ve already seen that Sales follows Marketing on the purchase journey and how they contribute to each other’s success. But what specific aspects should be aligned?

 

• • The ideal profile of Client and buyer personas. Salespeople communicate directly with Customers and must share the knowledge they acquire “in the field” to help Marketing capture better leads: what role they play, the size of the companies they work for, professional sector, age group, gender, interests, preferences about the sources of information they use, pains, the content they seek, etc.
  • Registration of information and use of the CRM. middle Marketing is responsible for nurturing leads at the beginning and of the funnel; knows which contents, pages, and emails they interacted with and which products or solutions they evaluated. This information must be recorded in the CRM, as it is essential for sales to create the so-called “rapport” and convert.

• • Lead qualification and Lead scoring. By jointly defining what constitutes a Marketing Qualified Lead and a Sales Qualified Lead, as well as lead scoring parameters, Sales are more likely to communicate only with those truly interested leads.

• • Definition of KPIs. It is important to define the Marketing KPIs (traffic, leads generated, emails opened, etc.) and the Sales KPIs(sales growth, average ticket, number of sales) separately. But also include the end-to-end conversion rate, that is, the number of sales made that came from the opportunities created by marketing.

• • Definition of complementary goals. Sales cannot achieve its objectives if marketing does not guarantee a certain number of qualified leads. Therefore, a fundamental part of SM marketing alignment is to determine lead generation goals based on sales needs.
• AgreementLevel. All the previous points (plus those that make sense in your organization) are signed in a Service Level Agreement (or SLA, Sales Level Agreement), a document that defines the responsibilities and expectations of each team, guaranteeing complementarity.

Conclusion

Why is it so important to align sales with marketing? We dare to say that the most correct question is why NOT to align sales with Marketing, since they are so interdependent and that they do not work without each other.

Contact us to align sales with marketing and stop losing business opportunities.

 

If your sales are complex and your sales process is basic, something needs to be fixed with that equation. 

Determining the complexity of your sales is the first step in defining the right sales process for your company. But first, it would be best to start by addressing the concept of “complex sales”. What are complex sales and what are they based on?

Complex sales are characterized by having 1) a high level of involvement and risk perception, a consequence of the high cost of acquisition, 2) a long sales cycle, exceeding 2 months and 3) several participants in the decision-making process.

If you have a product or service with a high cost, you certainly recognize these 3 characteristics. I am talking, for example, about software development companies, advanced technological products, industrial machinery, business intelligence services, or other companies whose offer represents a large investment with long-lasting effects for the customer.

These sales become complex for logical reasons. First, the public for these solutions is necessarily companies of a significant size – the only ones capable of bearing the cost and in need of making a large investment.

As the investment is significant, the perception of risk is more excellent. Making a wrong decision at this level can cost a company thousands of euros. Therefore, it is understandable that the client wants to study your proposal in depth, know in depth the benefits of your solution, and compare it with that of other companies. This negotiation process can take months. 

Another thing that lengthens the sales cycle is the number of stakeholders involved. These companies have several stakeholders with decision-making power and it is unlikely that it will go through a single manager or the CEO. 

Instead, you have to deal with the financial decision-makers who assess the conditions for the investment, the technicians who give the endorsement on the adequacy of the solution, and other internal influencers capable of derailing or moving the negotiation.

Altogether, they are a handful of people your sales reps have to communicate with and convince, sometimes indirectly, so it’s no wonder that your sales reps take several months to close the sale.

It has already become clear that complex sales are the opposite of those low-involvement sales in the B2C market, where a consumer makes a purchase decision, alone, within the space of 30 minutes. Incidentally, even in B2B, there are sales with little implication, for example, when a startup decides to try social media management software for a few months.

What does this knowledge bring back to your company? We have to refer back to the importance of creating a sales process. In complex B2B sales, you must establish a sales process that helps sales reps motivate different decision-makers by highlighting the benefits to the pain points right. In addition, a good sales process allows you to replicate good practices that improve the approach and help to reduce the risks of a bad decision, both for you and your client… which is the last thing you want after months of investing in this business.

What is a sales process?

A sales process is a series of steps required to complete a sale. It starts at the most preliminary stage of the sale, lead generation, and can go all the way to post-sale account management. We say “can” because all sales processes are tailored to each company.

This framework details how sales can convert leads into customers and build loyalty. For each phase, it explains the actions the rep must take and in what order, so that all of his actions are intentional and premeditated. 

Nothing harm a sale more than starting a conversation with the customer without having a direction. A well-designed sales process reduces the time you spend wondering about the next step, and frees up time to dedicate to other customers.

At the same time, a good sales process also captivates the customer, because it neutralizes objections before they are raised. Thanks to this, customers feel more secure with the prospect of doing business with you.

Without a sales process that all team members recognize, sales managers cannot communicate with reps. They also have difficulties in training new sales reps and increasing productivity and end up throwing down all aspirations of being able to measure, automate actions and have a scalable sales team. 

Example of a B2B sales process

1. Lead Generation and Prospecting
2. Discovery Call
3. Lead Qualification
4. Product or Service Presentation/Demonstration
5. Objection Handling
6. Closing the Sale
7. Onboarding
8. Business Expansion

Lead Generation 

This is the process of finding new leads to integrate into the sales funnel It involves all inbound marketing actions and also sales prospecting actions, such as LinkedIn searches, contacts from conferences or professional events, and contacts referred by other customers.

Discovery call 

This is the first contact between the rep and the potential customer. But before calling, the rep should know:

• What is the purpose of the call
• What questions to ask
• What objections to expect and have answers ready

During the call, the rep should be guided by the plan, but also let the conversation develop naturally. After the contact, it is useful to reflect on the conversation, perhaps talking to a colleague and getting feedback, and thinking about goals for the next contact.

Lead qualification

This process proposes some qualification criteria and questions to uncover the necessary information. In this way, reps will be better prepared for the first contacts and sure that they are chasing the right leads.

To qualify leads, they can ask questions like:

“What is your role within the company?”

“What do you do in your day-to-day?”

“What problem do you want to solve?”

“What other solutions are you evaluating?”

Thus, you can respond to some of the most common criteria:

Does this lead have the ideal customer profile?

Do you have the decision-making power for this purchase?

Do you have the necessary budget?

Presentation/demonstration of the product or service

This step is reserved for customers who are more advanced in the purchase journey. Presentations are tailored to the potential client, which involves a lot of time and resources – hence the importance of asking the right questions during previous contacts.

Handling objections

It is very common for objections or doubts to arise after the demonstration. Therefore, it makes sense to make this moment a specific step in the sales process. Throughout conversations, a sales rep must be able to identify and anticipate potential customer objections.

Closing the Sale

This is the step that all sales reps work towards. At this stage, it is usual to deal with contracts, proposals, budgets, getting decision-makers to approve the purchase, etc. To save closers time, this step should anticipate the necessary documentation as far as possible.

Onboarding

Work continues after the sale closes. This is the time when you implement the proposed solution on the client. Reps must ensure that they pass on the necessary information to the next team so that the customer continues to receive the level of service they are used to.

Expand the business

The final step involves all the initiatives account managers take to upsell and cross-sell. But not only. The business expansion also comes from super-satisfied customers who leave referrals for other potential customers.

How to create a sales process?

Now that you’ve seen an example, you’re better equipped to start creating a sales process that fits your organization.

• Process definition

Start by pointing out the relevant steps, including internal processes and customer interactions. Also, establish a leader for each step – the person capable of detailing the actions to be taken.

• Process mapping

With the support of the process leader, create an ordered list of processes and list all corresponding actions. Don’t forget to consider all the departments that are involved, such as the technical department or marketing.

• Process standardization

Describe in detail how to develop each activity:

• Charge: who will carry out the task?
• Action: How can you perform the task?
• Support material: documentation, systems, tools, tables, systems, etc.
• Deliverables: what is produced in this phase? Reports, proposals, budgets, etc.

 

• Definition of indicators

Make a survey of the indicators that will best represent the team’s performance. The sales manager’s role is to evaluate these indicators and determine the quality of execution, propose improvements and provide coaching based on individual results.

• Constantly Update

The purpose of having a sales process is to make sales more predictable, measurable, and scalable. To do this, you need to constantly innovate systems, adopt new productivity tools, add or remove steps, depending on feedback from reps and customers.

Finally, it is important to say that many companies make the mistake of thinking about the sales process from the perspective of the internal organization. On the contrary, the point of view you should follow is that of the customer, in order to be able to effectively accompany their purchase journey.

So when thinking about the sales process, answer the following questions: who is my customer? What are your pain points? For what benefits are they willing to pay? Does my value proposition meet the pain points?

At Digital Selling, we are prepared to help you design a sales process that will bring concrete results. Talk to us!

The sales funnel is one of the fundamental concepts of Digital Marketing and Sales. It’s been around for over 100 years and has had several iterations, but all seek to establish a map that lets you visualize the steps potential customers go through to become customers.

By accompanying contacts throughout the sales stages, Marketing and Sales are able to align their actions and processes with the specific doubts and obstacles of potential customers at each stage. In this way, sales managers are more effective at transforming the contacts that Marketing generates into actual customers.

How the sales funnel works

Although the specific stages of the sales funnel vary from company to company – depending on the business model, customer expectations and needs, the sales process, … – any traditional funnel ends up essentially corresponding to 4 major phases:

• Attention

• Interest

• Desire

• Action

In a real funnel, the largest amount of liquid enters at the top. As you move to the bottom of the funnel, the volume decreases. This analogy is useful for companies, but with a big caveat.

While in a funnel the quantity that leaves is the same as that which entered, in a sales funnel the visitors to a website do not all turn into sales. In other words, the best analogy is a perforated funnel, which ends up losing some of the liquid.

The objective of the process that we are going to describe below is precisely to ensure that as many contacts as the possible move from the top to the bottom of the funnel.

Attention

The main function of Marketing is to capture the largest possible audience within the target audience. This is nothing new. Content is a great marketing ally at this stage: blog articles and other informational materials, publications on social networks, the press, advertisements, partnerships, etc. are common formats for attracting the public’s attention.

Using content to draw attention is a concept based on the idea that a large percentage of our potential customers look for information in order to solve a pain point they have.

As an example, imagine a company that has developed billing software that integrates with eCommerce platforms. Possibly, a part of your audience still manages invoices manually when they receive an order on the website. It is for this audience that it makes sense to produce “top of the funnel” marketing content, which presents a solution to optimize the process with accessible terms and not too technical.

As this audience learns more about available solutions, they will need more in-depth information, and eventually, they will leave their contact details, which takes us to the next stage.

Creating interest and stimulating desire

Interest and desire go hand in hand, let’s see how.

When leads have already defined their problem well and are researching specific solutions, Marketing steps in to generate interest in your solution.

This means producing other types of content: didactic resources, webinars, videos, and email sequences, among other ways to show not only the product’s characteristics but also the value (or intangible benefits). In this way, you are inciting interest in the product and the desire to obtain the same benefit.

Introducing topics with an increasing level of specificity educate the lead and help to position yourself as an authority on the topic. But not only. The consumption of specific topics gives clues about the true stage of the lead in their buying journey, which is extremely useful for sales.

Through certain contact capture mechanisms, also known as lead magnets – for example, downloadable materials, newsletter subscriptions, or account registration – we are able to obtain some contact information. At that moment, they are no longer just visits and become leads.

This is the time when Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) contact leads to find out if they are Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), that is if your offer meets their needs (if not, they continue to be nurtured by Marketing). If so, they move on to the next stage.

Action

The SQL is the leads that make it to the bottom of the funnel. They already know everything about their problem, they know what they need, and what the best solution is and they are prepared to choose the supplier. Now is the right time for the Account Executive to submit a proposal.

After the Marketing nutrition, the preparation with the SDRs, and with the certainty that they are in the ideal phase to receive a proposal, the probability of accepting the proposal increases exponentially. Furthermore, the probability of giving up on the service or product after implementation is also lower, because this process ensures that the customer makes the best decision for him.

Benefits of the sales funnel

• Having a well-structured funnel allows you to understand the level of knowledge and interest in your offer.
• Timing the submission of the proposal correctly avoids bombarding potential clients with too much information too soon.
• Since not all contacts are ready to buy, the sales funnel helps prioritize the right leads and save sales reps time.
• Allows you to adjust the themes and frequency of campaigns to send the right message at the right time.
• It allows managers to scale the sales process, create some predictability about revenues, and set goals.
• Allows you to align Marketing with Sales and optimize both processes.

How are the sales funnel changing?

Marketing and Sales, and the sales funnel by drag, are entirely centered on customer needs. It is no coincidence that the funnel is divided into “attention, interest, desire, and action”. This means that the activities and processes of the companies act according to the needs of the consumer and not the other way around.

Digital marketing, marketing automation, and analytics have dramatically changed the process of converting new leads into customers. Sales reps now rely less on intuition to close sales – instead, they use complex data to prioritize sales opportunities.

Finally, one of the biggest changes was the post-sales entry into the funnel. In the sales funnel just described, we are at the purchase decision stage. But today, a sales funnel is not complete without contemplating implementation and customer retention. Marketing and customer success comes into play after the sale to promote customer satisfaction and brand advocacy.