Buying Process and Buyer’s expectations
A typical buyer goes through three sages.
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
Each of these main stages has three further steps
70% of the buying process is now complete by the time a prospect is ready to engage with sales.
The Marketing and Sales disconnect
Marketing tends to work with specific activities designed to generate leads. Once leads are generated Sales take over. The only time both departments interact is to periodically exchange feedback about market conditions when sales are down. Marketing wants to know what is not working, why prospects are not buying and if the ‘marketing pitch’ needs to be tweaked.
The Result?
- Not enough Leads, inconsistent pipeline, no definite lead profiling based on buyer persona
- Poor Lead Quality because of virtually non-existent lead nurturing, bad and ‘not ready’ leads routed to sales, and even when leads are routed, it is a manual process.
- Low Lead Conversion because sales has no insight into lead quality, wasted time and very long inconsistent sales cycles.
- Poor quality of Reporting and metrics resulting in lack of accountability.
Ultimately, missed sales targets.
1. Missing out on Leads
- 79% of marketing leads are not pursued. (need lead profiles and lead assignment rules)
2. Engage with Hot Prospects Quickly
- 78% of sales goes to the vendor that responds first. (need rules, scoring and grading)
3. Be Top of Mind for your Prospects
- Nurtured leads deliver 47% higher than average order values than non-nurtured leads.
- Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Need Automatic Lead Nurturing)
Marketing Automation Benefits
- Better Quality Leads
- Increased Pipeline
- Improved Close Rates
- Complete Insight of the process and clients – leads to better quality leads…