Welcome back to my note guide on the HubSpot Academy Inbound Certification section on Smarketing. If your business is not implementing these Sales and Marketing integrated strategies, you'll be leaving money on the table!
Smarketing: Sales + Marketing Team Synergy
-Most important during Close stage of Inbound Methodology
-Point in the Close phase where Marketing can most effectively hand-off qualified leads to Sales team to close
-Process of aligning Sales and Marketing teams around common goals within a business or organization, boost revenue
5 Best Practices of Smarketing:
1) Both teams must have the same organizational goals
2) Visitors and leads goals should be tied to sales quotas
3) Marketing & Sales must have visibility into each other's goals and progress. Adjustments can be made in real time.
4) Base compensation on shared marketing and sales goals
5) Don't forget about Buyer Personas
How To Integrate Smarketing Into Your Organization:
1) Speak the same Language
Start the foundation with marketing and sales funnel terminology.
Sales + Marketing Funnel:
Marketing at Top, Marking & Sales Middle, Sales at Bottom
Contact- doesn't indicate which stage of the funnel
Prospects- website visitors who've visited, you have minimal data on or signed up for a blog or email newsletter
Lead- contact who has submitted a form in return for an ebook, white paper, etc.
Middle of Funnel: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL).
MQL: Leads identifying themselves as more engaged. Typically with offers like demo requests, buying guides, and other high-interest level offers. Must be defined by having enough information about the contact to assess their fit for your product or service as well as their level of interest.
SQL: MQL's that sales team deem worthy of a direct follow up sales call.
Bottom of Funnel:
-SQL moved along to an opportunity
-Opportunity: SQL that sales rep has communicated with and logged as a legitimate potential customer
-Final Stage is closing the sale. Most successfully within 1 hour
2) Implement a Service Level Agreement (SLA)
-Commit to each other the policies and terminology
-Calculate Leads MQLs, SQLs, Revenue Goals, # of Sales Reps
3) Set up Closed Loop Reporting
-Enables sales and marking to improve conversion rates over time, between each stage of the funnel
-Benefits to Marketing: Getting up to date contact info and status updates, learning which marketing programs are working, gaining visibility to increase marketing ROI
-Benefits to Sales: De-duplicated contacts, prioritization of contacts, more educated contacts, increase in close rate and overall sales ROI
a) Analyze which marketing sources (organic, social, referal, etc), produce the most customers
b) Allows you to use conversion assists to help you understand how each individual piece of content you create contributes to closing customers. Provides insights to what content converts.
c) Provides timeline of all interactions a contact took prior to becoming an MQL or customer
d) Pass information to Sales aiding them in connecting and engaging with contacts within the first 24 hours
e) Send automatic updates to Sales team when leads revisit website or take other key actions, make sure you follow up at the best time.
4) Rely On Data:
Use Smarketing Dashboards:
Start off with SLA and include other key metrics. Track leads by source and create goals within each conversion channel
Use a whole set of Sales dashboards. Sales by day and previous months or quarters for comparison.
5) Maintain Open Communication
Maintain open communication and base decisions and improvements on data.Weekly smarketing meetings and monthly management meetings for inbound marketing dept.
Need Some Sales Motivation? Read My Posts:
Best Of Luck In Business To You All!
Michael J. Schiemer of Schiemer Consulting
Enthusiastic Entrepreneur & Owner of Frugal Business
Digital Marketing, Social Media, & Entrepreneurship on a Budget
Mike Schiemer Builds Better Business
Share This On Social Media:
