Sales tuning: More power for customer acquisition

We hear it again and again: The digital transformation is permanently changing consumer behavior and thus also the sales process - in the B2B as well as in the B2C sector: Business customers also frequently inform themselves on the Internet before making a purchase and expect the optimal offer almost anytime and anywhere. As a result, B2B companies, especially sales departments, are under enormous pressure not to overlook any business opportunities, if possible - and even more: to recognize and exploit all potential. Professional lead management promises an effective solution for this, in order to get more power into customer acquisition. The following eight tips will help you to implement this approach correctly.

1. generate and leverage synergies between marketing and sales

Encourage and promote the cooperation of both departments: Sales supports Marketing with specific customer knowledge, which increases the accuracy of marketing measures. On the other hand, marketing opens up new business opportunities and qualifies them for sales. In this way, you both benefit from synergies that serve the requirements of the market as well as the demands of potential customers and at the same time support revenue generation.

2. expand perspective on business opportunities

In sales, you prefer to look after your active customers and, of course, take advantage of cross-selling and upselling potential. Potential new customers with whom you are not (yet) in contact, who for example inform themselves anonymously on the Internet, are often overlooked. Through professional lead management, you can use marketing to broaden your perspective on other existing sales potential.

3. get found with the support of inbound marketing measures.

As more and more prospects begin their buying decision process by researching online on their own, they are often out of your reach. However, with a well thought-out inbound marketing strategy, your company can still attract their attention. Unlike outbound marketing, inbound marketing does not cold-call potential customers directly or confront them with advertising, but rather picks them up on their individual buyer journey with attractive, useful information on the Internet.

4. understand and use the informing phase of the lead as a getting-to-know phase

By attracting the attention of your ideal customers early on with appropriate marketing measures and accompanying them along their entire customer journey, you too can gain important insights into the needs and preferences of potential customers by exchanging useful content for data. Think of the lead's informing phase as a getting-to-know-you phase, too. Then you can intelligently guide the sales process, and successfully steer it toward closure.

5. use intelligent automatisms

Despite their name, marketing automation solutions support not only marketing, but the sales process as a whole and extend the marketing focus to the actual customer. As a result, you benefit from an end-to-end new customer or lead management process, more transparency, more realistic forecasts, and greater planning certainty. You receive qualified, "sales-ready" leads with a detailed information history, which in turn increases your probability of closing.

6. keep inactive leads and customers in stand-by mode

Even prospects who could not decide to buy after all remain in the pool of a marketing automation system in a kind of stand-by mode. This means that you can return to the contacts at a later point in time or have them resume the decision-making process in the course of an automated warm-up or upselling marketing campaign.

7. constantly optimize the interface between marketing and sales

The quality of the interface between marketing and sales or between the marketing automation solution and sales automation software (e.g., a CRM system) is crucial for successful lead management. Therefore, clarify in advance when and how a lead is transferred from marketing to sales management, how information or data is exchanged and synchronized, and how both sides can ensure the quality of the interface in the long term.

8. actively start and control lead management

To actually benefit from the advantages of automated lead management, it's best to give the starting signal yourself: The one who starts the change also controls it. So approach marketing and also the IT department proactively with concrete suggestions and your special knowledge. Initiate a search movement within the company for relevant information and suitable content yourself. This is how you make lead management your project.

SC-Networks is an e-mail service provider and manufacturer of Evalanche, one of the most advanced, web-based e-mail marketing solutions on the European market. SC-Networks is the email marketing specialist for agencies and large international companies. The eight tips are an excerpt from the e-book "Turbo for Sales - How Lead Management Supports Customer Acquisition". On 24 pages, you'll find solutions on how sales can master the challenges of an increasingly digital business environment and really step on the gas in acquiring new customers through lead management. The e-book is available at Sc-networks.com available for download free of charge.