Page 114 - The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - PDFDrive.com

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Converting Inbound Interest into Revenue

At least five times per month, I would receive the following email from one of
our account managers at HubSpot:

Mark,

I could use your help with one of our customers. The customer signed up
for HubSpot six months ago. They are doing great with their inbound
marketing. When the customer signed up, they were getting a few dozen
leads through their website per month. Now they are getting over 500 leads
per month!

Here is the issue. The salespeople hate the leads. They believe the lead
quality is really low. Would you mind jumping on a call with their head of
marketing and their head of sales to help figure out the issue?

Of course I was willing to help. Every time I did, I found the same set of issues.
Some of the issues were caused by the manner in which marketing was handling
the leads. Some of the issues were caused by the manner in which sales was
handling the leads. I will elaborate on both sets of issues in this chapter.

Marketing's Role in Converting Interest into
Revenue

The Internet has empowered buyers. In many cases, the first few stages of the
buying journey happen online. As such, marketing is playing an ever increasing
role in the selling process, nurturing these prospects and passing them to sales at
precisely the right time.

Here are the most common mistakes and the most important best practices
marketing needs to adopt as they work with sales to convert interest into
revenue.

The Most Common Mistake: Don't Pass All the Leads to
Sales

Imagine for a moment that you're the head of marketing at the company