Do you know where Marketing Ends and Sales Begins?
Having a clearly defined sales process is important for any organization that is serious about growing or scaling.
Here’s a quick example from a previous post on a simple sales process we defined:
A recent conversation I’ve been having is around where marketing stops and sales begins. In the example above it’s helping move from Zone 1 to Zone 2.
A simple answer is: Sales begins when you need a person to person interaction to move a prospect to the next stage in the sales process.
It’s helpful to talk about the primary focus of both Marketing and Sales:
Marketing:
The primary focus of marketing is on creating awareness and interest in a company's products or services. Its objectives include understanding market needs, building brand awareness, generating leads, and establishing a strong market presence. Marketing efforts are typically broad and long-term, aimed at attracting potential customers and nurturing relationships.
Sales:
Sales is focused on converting leads generated by marketing into actual customers. The main objective is to close deals, achieve sales targets, and generate revenue. Sales activities are more direct and immediate, concentrating on one-on-one personal interactions with potential customers to finalize purchases or scope contracts.
I look at most things through “Sales Lenses” so disclaimer here, I resonate with Clemence Leper’s Post on Marketing which made me laugh out loud.
Despite the obvious commentary on the historical tension between sales and marketing, marketing has a critical role to play in two areas that make our lives, as Sales Leaders and Sales Reps, so much easier; attracting potential customers (Lead Gen) and nurturing relationships (Lead Nurture).
Lead Generation: Acquire new leads.
Lead Nurture: Develop and strengthen relationships with existing leads.
Every sales person on the planet wants a qualified lead that is ready to transact. I once thought, “if only all leads just came on a silver platter fully qualified and ready to sign on the dotted line…”
That was my younger dumber self that thought marketing was easy and sales was God’s gift to any company because, hey - we generate all the revenue right?
Over time I’ve come to realize that this “holy grail” happens only every once and a while and it’s mostly due to luck and timing - and some good marketing.
In reality marketing for a service (which is the business I'm in) is about finding people that are a fit and are open & interested.
So defining fit, or what is a qualified lead, is really important.
We use the following definition when it comes to Lead Generation:
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): A prospect who has engaged with marketing efforts (like downloading a whitepaper or attending a webinar or filling out a webform) and meets predefined criteria indicating potential interest in a product or service.
At the top of the our funnel (Zone 1 to Zone 2) we really look for ways to have quality conversations or engagements with prospects and through our process generate the need or desire to do business with us that ultimately ends in a deal.
Marketing is directly helpful in the INITIAL conversation of a qualified lead and it is then a Sales responsibility to take that initial interest through the sales process (customer journey) to close.
Not all qualified leads close.
If they did we wouldn’t need Sales.
The key is getting clear on what your definition of a MQL is for your business. It should be simple and easy to see if it qualifies or not.
HOMEWORK: Create a clear definition of a marketing qualified lead and identify the handoff point where a human (Sales Rep) needs to get involved to move them further down the sales process.
For more on that see: Going from Questions to Close.
Happy Selling…
-Joe
PS let me know if you want to hear more about Lead Nurture and how it fits into the sales process.