The other day I emailed our Sales team about our new research report and I received an email response that read:
| Matt, this is great stuff. I especially like that you forwarded all the links to the information so that we know what the prospect sees. |
This simple exchange really got me thinking about how we Marketers roll out new content, landing pages, calls-to-action, etc.
In my email I included 4 quick bullets:
- The news about the report going live on our site
- A link to the landing page
- A link to the thank you page
- A link to the document
I imagine that many of you send and/or receive similar emails of your own. But I also can guess that some don't!
How can a Sales person speak intelligently when following up on a lead if they don't know:
- What the offer included
- How the content was presented
- What must have motivated the prospect to act
You might say "My Sales team is absolutely aware of all three!" but are you sure?
I download a lot of registration-required content and I can assure you that more than 50% of the resulting voicemails sound exactly like this:
| "Matt, I am just calling to follow-up. You recently expressed interest in our company..." |
Actually I didn't. I expressed interest in the content offered on your site. Wouldn't a better message be:
| "Matt, I saw that you downloaded our Lead Scoring Best Practices Ebook. It would be my pleasure to review the data with you and share other emerging trends we are tracking." |
Sales and Marketing must be on the same page to effectively convert web leads. So here's what I propose as a process. For existing web content:
- Get marketing & sales in a room/on a web meeting
- Walk through the current landing pages/forms on your site
- Discuss the calls-to-action
- Explain the content being offered
- Highlight the keywords and buzzwords that you think will get traction
Then, going forward, Marketing will create a document that captures just this information and distribute it to Sales when new landing pages / calls-to-action go live.
Do this on a regular basis, and you will see not only an increase in lead conversion but also in satisfaction ratings between Sales and Marketing.
Revenue generation is a team sport! What does your organization do to share information?