5 Strategies for Transforming Marketing Leads into Sales Opportunities

SMB businesses give up on their lead generation methods for the most common reason: they don't think they worked. Businesses spend time and money, but when they review their sales outcomes, they are unable to properly link closed transactions to campaigns. Qualified leads for marketing are not measured. The indicator is closed sales. However, there are no sales to close when the marketing qualified leads don't go into the sales pipeline.

Why don't more marketing lead result in chances for sales?

Sales pipelines would be fuller if everyone knew the solution to that. Businesses would close more net new business, sales representatives would be wealthier, and business owners would be giddy with joy.

Marketing Leads: Why They Don't Convert

In all seriousness, there are five reasons why your marketing leads aren't converting, most of them stem from the way your sales staff handles leads.

1. Words are absent. When we deliver marketing qualified leads to reps, this is the most frequent worry they express. What should I say on the phone? Salespeople frequently worry that they'll say something inappropriate because they weren't the first to approach the customer. Reps are unsure of how to begin a conversation unless it is with an inbound lead that contains some information. They perceive the call to be exactly like a cold call.
2. Which follow-up? On the first call, not many contacts would answer. Many salespeople will quit up after one or two failed attempts. The expectation of sales representatives is that a contact who has read their content, downloaded a checklist, or watch a video will be waiting for them to call on demand. That's not the case, as 90% of prospects who don't answer the first call end up as dropped leads without a follow-up strategy.
3. Email. Most salespeople now prefer using email as a prospecting tool. They believe an email to be the same as, and sometimes even superior to, a phone call. A potential customer can instantly respond via email. However, a potential customer can remove much faster. Calling makes a better first impression because most people still listen to at least some of their voicemails.
4. Who is the target? When creating your campaign, you should frame it in terms of your desired target audience and have a clear notion of the contact you will be contacting. This information is frequently not relayed to Sales. The salesperson doesn't know enough about the target market when they receive their marketing qualified leads to engage in meaningful discussion. Meetings are not valued by prospects, and the lead does not become a customer.
5. Failure is your only alternative. Reps give marketing qualified leads a bad rap. If salespeople haven't been able to convert them in the past, they will assume that new leads will be awful and won't pick up the phone to contact. You start to hear comments like, "They have too many other things to do. Why don't you pay a telemarketing to call instead?" at this point.

The Best Way to Turn Marketing Leads

With some preparation, you can overcome each of these difficulties. Develop a plan to overcome any hesitation you or your salespeople may have in following up on marketing qualified leads. Here are 5 strategies to help you convert more of your marketing-qualified leads.

1. Make a dialogue plan. Make sure you've read the campaign material, then utilize it to prepare your speech. Don't count on your prospect to recall a certain blog article or video. Instead, acknowledge that the prospect was interested in the campaign's subject. You want to start with that.
2. Plan for bloodhound follow-up. We refer to it as that in our prospecting training! Prior to giving up, determine how many times you will call, email, visit, and reach out on LinkedIn. Don't give up then. Reintroduce the contact into the campaign. They'll resurface as a lead if they're truly interested.
3. Don't email. Email should be a component of your follow-up strategy, so you can't completely forbid it, but get over your phone anxiety and PICK UP THE PHONE. Make it mandatory to call each marketing-qualified lead three times at the absolute least before including them in the campaign. You can decide to keep phoning until you get through to a contact and have a chat depending on the type of campaign you are doing.
4. Tell us the specifics. Planning your lead generation campaign is a terrific example of strategy in action. Make sure your sales representative is knowledgeable on the target market and personas. When a lead generation strategy is finished, we organise a corporate meeting to present it, so the salespeople are aware of our target audience and our motivations. It not only enhances their campaign follow-up, but it also modifies their daily selling strategy. Use the information you retrieved from the drawer.
5. Adapt your perspective. Contacts who choose to click and read, view, download, or attend something you send them are considered marketing qualified campaign leads. They don't have a lock-in appointment. They demonstrate curiosity. They provide you the option to call, get to know the contact a little better, and develop a friendship. The prospect may require assistance right away or later. Assume that 10% of these leads will result in an appointment as you approach them. The rest are opportunities for the future. That isn't failing. The salesperson's role is to do that.

How to Boost MQL Conversions During a Downturn

Prospecting and selling require greater work under situations like a probable recession. To provide the required number of MQLs for the sales team, marketing must increase its efforts. Improve SEO. Strengthen the messaging on your website and add more material. Send out additional email campaigns. Post on social media more often. Boost your online advertising.

Increase your marketing to reach as many new people as you can. You need to be more noticeable in a downturn when fewer people may be looking, to be noticed by those who are.

Marketing may loosen lead scoring as part of the enhanced efforts. This will enable them to provide sales with more leads in the hopes that the salespeople may uncover some lucrative chances within them.

Add these tactics to your MQL follow-up during times of uncertainty, like as a recession, to boost conversions.

1) Increase the scope of your Bloodhound follow-up plan. Possibly, prospects aren't prepared to interact. Although interest is still present during a recession, contacts take longer to accept appointments. They are carefully weighing their needs against their available funds. They need your assistance at this point in deciding whether it's critical to take care of that issue right away. To engage with them, sales must follow up with even more discipline. 3 weeks should be added to your Bloodhound Follow-up for MQLs.

2) Develop a wider scope for your Bloodhound follow-up plan. Prospects might not be prepared to interact. However, contacts take longer to accept appointments during a recession. They're thoughtfully weighing their needs against their available resources. They now require your assistance in assessing if it is critical to take care of that issue right away. To engage with them, sales must follow up even more systematically. Add three weeks to your Bloodhound Follow-up for MQLs.

3) Confirm the prospect's interest in the things they appear to be paying attention to when you engage them. They might merely be conducting research, after all. Alternatively, it's possible that they have interest but are hesitant to participate until they have a budget in place. It will be easier for you to gauge when they might be prepared to begin the sales process with you and what your best course of action is if you know what motivated them to read, view, or download content from your campaign.

4) Keep the prospect in your marketing campaigns if they are a possible lead in the future but are not qualified to move forward in the sales process. They will stay heated as a result until the appropriate time. Sure, you want to follow up on your own, but in a downturn, there may be more prospects warming up than you can reach out to regularly. This makes sure that potential customers don't get overlooked.

Disregard the complaints of the reps

Help your reps pick up the phone by helping them get over all of their concerns (which are really fears) about their marketing qualified prospects. You schedule more appointments as you have more conversations. Your pipeline will fill up with more new sales opportunities the more appointments you schedule. If you have more possibilities coming your way, guess what happens? Yup. You finally grinned all the way to the bank.

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