Coffee for Closers | Leads360 Sales & Marketing Blog 

March 20, 2021 – It’s the first day of spring, so what better way to start the new season of sales than with a fresh eye toward supporting your marketing team’s efforts to help you create more leads that convert. When sales and marketing work together, they are far more effective in tracking and measuring what works. Here are three tips to spring your sales team into action this season.

#1 — Ongoing two-way dialogue between sales and marketing: You have your campaign ID’s and phone numbers set up in the system. Push reports going to the marketing team like clockwork, and marketing is tracking campaign effectiveness in generating qualified leads and increasing/decreasing spend accordingly.

So what’s missing? A conversation, the sales manager and marketing manager should be sitting down weekly to discuss the lead flow, lead quality and campaign effectiveness.   By analyzing lead flow from both the sales manager and marketing manager’s perspective much can be gained in tuning both processes on the sales side and targeted campaign efforts on the marketing side. Rather than just decreasing spend of campaigns that have been less effective, maybe it is about retargeting, trying a different tactic that might not be clear without an ongoing two way dialogue.

#2 — Refresh your definition of the ideal customer persona:  it’s been several months since your marketing team’s big branding / messaging refresh project. It was great, they interviewed a handful of sales associates to understand common buyers’ traits, but since then your companies introduced a few new products and services and your buyer persona has changed slightly.

The sales team holds some valuable cards, they talk to prospects day in and day out and have a strong pulse on the needs and wants of customers. Consider prompting your marketing team to conduct a regular sales check-in to discuss changing customer personas and targeted marketing efforts.

#3 — Monitor lead qualification and conversion rates closely: if all is going well with #1 and #2 and marketing is doing its job in sending qualified leads but you’re still not seeing an increase in conversion rates, it’s time to drill into the data. If qualified leads aren’t converting there is usually one of three things amiss (1) you’re products or services are competitive on price or quality (2) your sales associates need training and/or (3) your sales processes need tweaking. Good reporting and analytics are critical to track sales effectiveness, and it all starts with a good sales automation solution that tracks leads from click to close.

Happy spring cleaning! To learn more about Leads360′s sales automation platform, visit www.leads360.com

Where do meaningful connections with prospects occur? It may be on the phone. It may be through email or SMS. It’s important to be able to reach out to prospects immediately and automatically, irrespective of the channel through which they have contacted you. Being able to connect a prospect who has made an inquiry with a sales rep who is best suited to meeting the needs of that prospect is critical part of making meaningful connections.  But how does that work? How do you take steps to make sure that when a customer reaches out to your business, they are going to be contacted quickly, and by the rep who is the best match for them? It’s best accomplished by using lead management software with an integrated telephony solution. LMS is a solution that has many benefits. Chief among the strengths of LMS is the ability to help sales reps contact prospects quickly. And intelligent lead distribution will ensure that calls are routed to reps who have the proper licensure and expertise. Getting the most from your marketing spend means that every customer inquiry has the best possible experience. In the age of customer empowerment, satisfying customer engagement with companies is the rule and not exception. Never is this more important than the first time a prospect initiates a relationship with a company; It is at this critical point where prospect becomes customer. Leave nothing to chance, use lead management software.

March 15, 2021 — I often get asked, “How does Leads360 differ from a CRM solution?” The easiest, most immediately understood answer to this question is “We are the Salesforce.com for companies that sell to consumers.”

This often generates discussion on the difference between the two, how they complement one another and use cases for when you’d use sales automation versus a CRM or both together. The issue for some with CRM is it’s too focused on keeping current customers and not focused enough on taking advantage of opportunities to snag new ones.  

A good sales automation solution is laser focused on turning leads into customers, closing the gap in functionality in a typical CRM solution.  Leads360 offers serious upgrades in lead distribution, lead prioritizations, and intelligent dialing.  Taken together, Leads360’s services will allow any sales team already using Salesforce.com a chance to fine tune their process and turn into a lean, mean, lead-closing machine by addressing the three key drivers to lead conversion: speed, process, and persistence.

Salesforce customers are already chiming in about the benefits of Leads360 here on the Salesforce.com app exchange.  Jonathan Ruchman wrote: “The lead management capabilities are rich with critical functionality, but are also very easy for smaller organizations to adopt. Their solution is turnkey which makes it easy for our Allstate Agency Owners, many of whom are not tech-savvy.”

Ron Beach also highlighted the way the Leads360 app could be beneficial to smaller businesses: “While we like the versatility of Salesforce.com, setup can be somewhat daunting for a smaller company. We found that we could immediately start using the application in a productive manner and yet retain the ability to make changes later once we had production experience. Leads360 reduced the time required to achieve the benefits we were looking for with minimal effort.”

Finally, Marjorie Gilberg appeared to be more than a little enthusiastic about the services Leads360 can provide: “Leads360 is an essential tool for us because it allows us to manage all the leads that we buy and generate far more effectively than Salesforce can on it’s own. Leads360 allows us to route our leads precisely within our sales team, enforce a sales workflow, conduct email nurturing, and report in detail on everything that happens during the sales process. I strongly believe that Leads360 allows us to run a best-in-class sales organization”

To learn more visit the Salesforce.com App Exchange or watch this video on YouTube “Leads360: Lead Management for Salesforce” explaining the differences.