Sales Ops: Becoming More Strategic

Sales Ops: Becoming More Strategic Infographic

Sales Operations – what is it, and what does it mean to you?

Sales Operations, also known as Sales Ops, is a general term that refers to processes, technology, and activities that support the sales team and enable them to sell more efficiently and effectively. While Sales Ops has been part of the sales process for many years, it has only recently been recognized as a strategic powerhouse within the Revenue Operations function, helping to support and define the sales strategy.

Sales Ops is generally comprised of processes, technology, and data and analytics. Sales Ops professionals use these three pillars to create a strategy that makes it possible for the sales team to increase revenue while minimizing costs and streamlining tasks to complete more work with less effort.

Salesforce, the world’s leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, surveyed nearly 6,000 sales professionals as part of their “State of Sales” report. They took some of that data and created a companion piece, “Trends in Sales Ops,” which is meant to help emphasize the growing importance of the Sales Ops function and help others understand its strategic importance.

This infographic contains some of the key metrics contained in that report highlights some of the ways that Sales Ops is becoming more strategic within organizations. The Sales Operations job description is expanding and there has been increased involvement in the following areas since 2019:

Sales Strategy Planning
Sales Performance Analysis
Sales Strategy Coordination
Sales Technology Management
Sales Training Management
Cross-functional Workstream Management

Why is this important? Roughly 78% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments, but a whopping 59% of customers say it generally feels like they’re communicating with separate departments, not one company. It’s important to unify and empower the various functional groups to create a uniform and organized customer experience. You can achieve this by involving all of the relevant parties in the process.

Sales Operations Demystified

Understanding the increasing role of Sales Ops within your business is critical to increasing your revenue. We are a team of strategic revenue operations experts who help our clients maximize their revenue through process improvements, technology enhancements, and meaningful data analysis. We are well-versed in sales enablement tools, marketing automation solutions, and digital analytics applications. Feel free to contact us if you’d like to learn more about our services or schedule a free initial consultation.

The Key To Revenue Optimization Is Your CRM System

A Guide to Achieving Better Relationships and Interactions

Are you a business owner who spends more time on menial tasks than on initiatives directly related to revenue optimization, such as customer relationship management? Do you feel like you’re spinning wheels trying to increase revenue by creating more products?

What if there was a way you could get off that treadmill? And instead, maximize your revenue by optimizing your business processes and tech stack so you can better connect with your current customer base.

We call this working smarter, and this is what revenue optimization is all about. The key you need in your toolbox to achieve this goal is a quality CRM for small business software.

Don’t worry if you don’t know what a CRM system is or how it can help you; we’ve got you covered. Keep reading to learn about optimizing your revenue streams through improved customer relationships.

What Is A CRM System?

A quality customer relationship management (CRM) system can revolutionize the way you do business. Historically, the buyer’s journey was conceptualized as a linear process. Customers moved from marketing to sales and finally over to customer service.

However, in today’s business landscape, customers move back and forth between your teams regularly. And because of that, your teams need to communicate seamlessly to give your customers the best experience possible. Ideally, one that imprints a lasting, positive impression.

The customer lifecycle is now much more intertwined and less linear than ever before. With a fully integrated tech stack that allows all teams to access the CRM, everyone can see data they need on a customer’s profile, regardless of where the prospects are in the buying process.

This is where a cloud-based CRM can revolutionize the way you do business by allowing everyone on your team the ability to offer informed advice to your prospects and clients. Your team can see at a glance what products each customer has purchased and any previous customer service tickets opened, leading to a more personalized experience and increased sales and customer loyalty.

How CRM Can Help Your Business Improve Customer Service

Customers have spoken. And they want better customer service from the businesses they choose to support. And, more importantly, service is a significant factor in their final purchase decisions.

So, don’t put off improving your customer relationship management system for your business any longer. Improve the relationship you build with your customers. Then you’ll improve not only your customer service but also your bottom line.

Don’t discount your prices in an attempt to bring back repeat customers. They represent your warmest audience as they’ve already purchased from you before. Instead, give them an amazing experience, and they’ll pay top dollar to come back for more.

As you build out the story for your ideal buyer’s journey, consider how important the last phase is. This is why customer lifecycle optimization can improve your customer relationship.

You spend countless hours and hundreds of dollars acquiring new leads every month. Don’t waste that time and money by neglecting new customers after they purchase from you. Each time a customer reaches out to your organization, the person they talk to needs to see all their other touchpoints to service them efficiently.

By offering this individualized customer service, you can stand out from the crowd in your industry. When others aren’t going the extra mile in customer service, you can offer world-class service and a more personalized experience for your customers.

Offer exceptional service post-sale, and you’ll build a reputation that will increase revenue and your customer base. You can do this seamlessly because everyone on your team can access every client’s profile and information.

How CRM Improves Your Revenue Optimization

At the heart of every business is revenue generation. You’re always looking for more ways to increase sales and profits. But what if you instead looked at how to optimize your current sales and marketing tech stack to increase revenue?

By using a centralized program amongst all your revenue departments, you break down the silos. You can increase revenue with the products and customers you already have.

Now your sales operations team can provide valuable information to your customer service team, and vice versa. Break down the walls and open up communication.

If you’re not sure you’re maximizing the profit potential from your current CRM system, then you should reach out to a professional. Don’t keep wondering if your sales figures could be higher without creating new products, hiring more salespeople, or running more ads. Instead, take the data from your integrated tech stack and create reports and dashboards that will allow you to make data-driven decisions for your business.

With the right system in place, you can increase your revenue without increasing capacity. Don’t leave any untapped potential on the table. Now is the time to optimize your capacity so you can grow your business. Seek help from certified experts who can show you how to make the most of your CRM system to increase your revenue.

Grow Your Business by Growing Your Relationships

You know you should put your customers first. But it can be hard when you’re running your business; the details easily slip your mind when dealing with day-to-day tasks. This is why systems and processes are vital to your success.

Create a system that involves an all-encompassing customer relationship management program. A CRM for small business can revolutionize how you do business and improve your revenue optimization today.

Schedule your free consultation to see how Revenue Ops LLC can help you improve your customer relationships today using tools like Salesforce. We help businesses like yours increase revenue by enhancing technology, improving processes, and optimizing reports and dashboards so that you can make data-driven decisions to drive your business forward.

Creating a Revenue Operations Strategy

The key to growing and building your business is implementing a revenue operations strategy. However, many people are still learning about what revenue operations means and how it can impact their businesses as a whole.

Revenue operations is about creating alignment between teams, optimizing your technology systems, and surfacing data and analytics so that you can make data-driven decisions to grow your business. It doesn’t matter if you have an ecommerce store or brick and mortar locations. If you have a digitally enhanced business, optimizing revenue is vital to growth.

Learn about the key concepts needed to create an effective revenue operations strategy.

What Is A Revenue Operations Strategy?

Traditionally, teams like sales, marketing, and customer success operated more in a silo, and each had their own responsibilities, goals, processes, and technology to apply. These departments would occasionally interact, but in general, they would act as separate entities.

The lifecycle of a consumer is far different now than it was only a few years ago. Purchasing a product or service, especially something of high value, isn’t a quick decision. And, prospects have a high expectation in regards to the level of personal service they anticipate to receive from your company.

Revenue operations, also known as RevOps, breaks down the walls between departments and allows your company to have a 360-degree view of your prospects and clients. A revenue operations strategy is a plan for how your company will interact with those prospects and clients at every stage in the buyer’s journey and provides the prospect with a seamless, personalized experience that helps to increase revenue, reduce the length of the sales cycle, and increase customer loyalty.

Creating Your Revenue Operations Team

The first step is to create a Revenue Operations team. One important item to note when deciding where to place this team in your organization is to whom the team will ultimately report. The RevOps team should be independent of the sales and marketing teams, as priorities for the business should not be influenced by one group or another. RevOps needs the ability to prioritize projects based on what would be best for the business as a whole, not just what is desired by a particular team.

The RevOps team utilizes systems thinking concepts to analyze how the entire company’s departmental systems work together to create a larger overarching system, which takes a prospect through the entire marketing, sales, and customer success cycles. They are responsible for understanding how all of the parts interrelate and how the larger system functions over time. Consequently, they can prioritize the work that will make the largest positive impact on the business.

Team members generally consist of a leader, like a Director of Revenue Operations or a VP or Revenue Operations, along with various team members who specialize in operations for specific business areas. These specialists might include a Manager of Sales Operations, a Customer Success Operations Specialist, or a Marketing Operations Manager. These specialists act as the primary liaison between the Revenue Operations team and the company’s respective functional groups yet work together to create strategies that will help the functional groups accomplish their goals while still keeping how the larger system functions in mind.

Develop Critical Business Processes

The management team works with each core group to provide data sharing processes, insights into how each team impacts the other, and how they can leverage data to make each group more efficient.

Technology such as Salesforce and Salesloft provide the groups with the information they need without being overburdened by work and data collection. These platforms collect the data and have processes within them to provide the right information to each team.

These processes allow sales and marketing to work together to improve the processes for each, such as research and data for marketing conversions and which channels yield the best customers.

Implement Needed Technology Improvements

Technology plays an important part in the RevOps strategy. It includes the primary customer relationship management (CRM) platform, like Salesforce, marketing automation tools like Pardot, and various other sales enablement, communication, and analytics software like Salesloft and Drift.

The goal for the RevOps team in regards to technology improvements is to keep things as simple as possible. They want to minimize the amount of time spent adding data into these systems and maximize the amount of time that the end users can spend on more fun aspects of their job.

Integration and automation are key here. Regardless of the number of platforms needed, they want to develop a system to automate menial, repetitive tasks and combine platforms into a very simple user interface for the end users.

They also want to get the end users away from using spreadsheets and instead leverage the power of the integrated tech stack to bring visibility to the data to begin to build that 360-degree view of the customer, regardless of how they interact with the company.

For example, suppose a prospect filled out a form on a website, sent an email directly to a salesperson, and called the company’s main phone line. In that case, the team would want all of that information to flow through their systems into a central repository in the CRM. That way, whoever is responding to the prospect can understand all of the prospect’s actions and reply appropriately.

Moving data from spreadsheets into a cloud-based CRM also helps break down the silos of information between departments. Now, a member of the sales team would have real-time information about actions a prospect is taking with various marketing materials and can use that information to tailor their responses to the prospect to provide a personalized experience that speaks directly to their interests.

Develop and Share Departmental Processes

Process maps are a key part of a revenue operations strategy. They help you to think through what you’re doing at each stage of the process, what the entrance and exit criteria are for each stage, and surface any redundant processes that may have developed organically over time.

Each functional group should be tasked with mapping out their processes and defining the entrance and exit criteria for each stage. These processes should explicitly state who is involved in that step and also what technology is being used.

Once the process maps have been created, a Revenue Operations team member can work with the functional group to eliminate redundancies and develop an efficient system to move prospects or clients through their section of the funnel. This might involve adding or eliminating some technology, requiring specific data at a certain step to account for dependencies, or eliminating stages in the process that create unnecessary work.

The Revenue Operations team member will also work with the rest of their team to map out how each functional groups’ system works together and identify bottlenecks, gaps, or dependencies that need to be addressed.

Collect the Data and Determine KPIs

Data is the backbone of the RevOps strategy. The team needs to determine what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and figure out the effect that changes have on the system. Each of the tech systems that they’ve integrated gathers all sorts of data, from the job title and location of an incoming lead to a major pain point a company is experiencing.

The Revenue Operations team will help the functional groups develop and build reports and dashboards that show some of the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Platforms like Salesforce, Salesloft, and Tableau can be used to visualize the data and help executives at your company understand what’s happening so that they can make data-driven decisions to drive the business forward.

KPIs can include metrics like the number of new leads created this month, the percentage of leads converted to opportunities, new versus renewal revenue generated this year, and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores. How is this data trending, and what does the forecast look like against the company goals?

The management team should have a process for reviewing KPIs regularly. Some KPIs are best to view on a daily or weekly basis, while others are best analyzed during a monthly pipeline review. If the data isn’t trending in a favorable direction, the team can determine whether they need to pivot and alter their strategy to change the trend from negative to positive.

Benefits of Revenue Strategic Consulting

You now have the information you need to create a RevOps strategy, but what’s the benefit of doing it? The RevOps strategy impacts every area of your business and allows streamlined communication and accountability between sales, marketing, and customer service.

Data collection lets you see the direction your business is heading, so you can predict growth and make investments in technology and other areas. You see how the strategies impact each group and can make changes for better optimization.

The goal of the strategy is revenue growth, which you will ultimately see reflected in increased sales and higher customer retention rates, which both lead to increased customer loyalty. You can improve revenue without bringing in additional people or resources.

In this day and age, things change quickly, and to stay relevant to your prospects and customers, you need to be able to change right along with them. Your RevOps strategy will allow you to stay agile and afford you the visibility into what’s changing when it’s changing, and why so that you can make the best decision to continue to grow your business.

However, not all companies have the resources or personnel on hand to build out a revenue operations strategy. That’s where a revenue operations consulting firm, like Revenue Ops LLC, can help. Our certified industry experts can help you develop necessary processes, implement or optimize technology, and develop the data and analytics needed to maximize your revenue.

Revenue Growth Is Your Future

If you want to grow your business, then you need to optimize your current revenue operations model. A revenue operations strategy provides this not only by increasing your sales and conversions through prospect and client personalized communications but by streamlining your tech stack and visualizing important data so that you can make the decisions that are right for your business.

If you want to learn more about revenue operations strategies or talk to us about how we can help you by becoming an extension of your team, explore our website, or contact us directly at contact@revenueopsllc.com.

How to Use Email Metrics to Make Data-Driven Decisions

This blog was originally posted on the Pardot.com on March 3, 2020.
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

While guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar might win you a prize, this type of guess work is much less successful when it comes to email marketing.

Thankfully, marketing automation provides marketers with a variety of methods to measure what’s working and what isn’t regarding your emails, along with ways to methodically test content when you’re unsure. This information allows you to make data-driven decisions about how to execute your email strategy and achieve maximum results.

WHAT IS A/B TESTING?
Have you ever had a debate about which version of an email would perform best?

“Keep it short and sweet! Use lots of pictures – even emoji’s in the subject line!”

“We need to talk about the new features. Plus, my subject line is way more compelling, and it doesn’t need emoji’s!”

What if I told you that you can have your cake and eat it, too?

Welcome to the wonderful world of A/B testing. A/B testing is used to send different versions of an email to a portion of your list, and track how effective each version is. You can then designate what the criteria is for the “winning” email, and send the remainder of the list the winning version.

WHY SHOULD I A/B TEST AN EMAIL?
Why would you want to send an email that doesn’t really capture the interest of your audience? The simple answer is – you don’t. However, we don’t always know what is going to perform the best. In that case, we would A/B test the email.

A/B testing an email gives you an opportunity to use data to automatically choose which version of an email the majority of your list should receive. It also provides you with a chance to test variables within emails to see if there are changes that you should be making in order to maximize engagement and provide the most value to your prospects.

Your A/B test could be as simple as seeing which subject line will perform the best, or it could be a complex test where you’re checking a longer, text-heavy email versus a shorter, visual heavy email.

A/B TESTING BASICS
How do you run an A/B test, you ask? No matter which marketing automation platform you’re using, the steps are essentially the same: It’s as easy as counting to 4.

Think back to your high school science class experiments. Remember the phrase “Isolate the variable?” The same rule applies when it comes to A/B testing. The first step is to determine which specific element you want to test in an email and keep it simple. We want to measure the differences between the two emails, and that’s hard to do with too many variables.
Next, determine the length of time you want your A/B test to run, and the criteria for choosing a winner. Will it be based on email opens, or clicks?
How much of your email audience do you want to use for the test? You can choose up to 50% of the original list, but the average is 25%. If you choose 25%, that means that 12.5% of your original list will receive the version A email, and 12.5% will receive version B. Once the test has concluded, the remainder of your list will receive the winning version.
Now for the fun part — check your analytics! It’s time to see what worked.

HOW DO I KNOW WHAT’S WORKING?
If you’re using Salesforce Pardot as your marketing automation platform, you can see what happened with your A/B test by visiting Marketing>Emails>A/B Tests. elect the email you wish to see, and you’ll be taken to the initial report, where you can view a timeline for how each email was performing during the test period.

In this case, we were testing whether an image or a button was more effective for click-through-rates. We used the same subject line and body copy in both emails, but in the A version, we had an image as our CTA, while in the B version, we had a button as our CTA.

As you can see from the results of the A/B test, the image version of the CTA clearly outperformed the button version, so once the A/B test had concluded, the remainder of our list received the A version of the email. If we wanted to see how each individual email performed, we could click on the button under each version that says, “View Report,” and that will take us to each individual email so that we can see a map of how each email performed.

What did we learn from this test? For our audience, an image CTA was more effective in getting the prospects to engage with our email, so we should consider replacing CTA buttons with image CTA’s for future emails.

Does that mean we’re done A/B testing? Absolutely not. Now that we’ve determined the type of CTA to use, we can start A/B testing email subjects, so that we can find the most effective one. Then, we can then take a look at the email copy to see if there are improvements to be made. By continually testing different elements of our emails, we can learn valuable lessons about our audience and improve overall engagement.

EMAIL METRICS ARE THE KEY TO DATA-DRIVEN DECISIONS
What is the key to successfully making a data-driven decision regarding email performance? The metrics. After each email sent, regardless of whether it’s a single list email or an A/B test, check the email performance report to see what you can learn about what took place. For opens or clicks that are performing poorly, create a plan to improve or test those items in your next email send. For those that are performing well, take note, and try to incorporate those into future emails.

Understanding email metrics will enable you to make a data-driven decision about how to improve email engagement with your organization. Utilizing tools within Pardot like the A/B email testing functionality, and the email metrics reporting will give you visibility into what is and isn’t working, and allow you to take action based on qualitative, rather than purely quantitative data. Use this knowledge to increase your email engagement rates, and maximize results.

To learn more information about Engagement Studio in Pardot, visit Trailhead, and check out the Pardot Email Marketing for Pardot Lightning App Module.

We can help you find and implement the tools you need to make data-driven decisions. Our experienced and professional consultants are at your service to design the business you want. Learn more about how we maximize revenue for our clients.

How to Maximize Revenue with Technology and Automation

This blog was originally posted on the Pardot.com on December 3, 2019.

Who doesn’t want to make more money? Many companies miss out on the opportunity to fully maximize their revenue, because they’ve underutilized the ability to automate processes via technology.

However, just because a process CAN be automated, doesn’t mean that it SHOULD be automated.

So, how do you figure out how and what you should automate, and what the effect will be on your bottom line?

HOW CAN YOU AUTOMATE SOMETHING, IF YOU DON’T KNOW HOW IT WORKS?
Why do people take their cars to a mechanic? Because the mechanic is an expert on the complex systems involved in making the car work as it should. In order to have an opportunity to automate your business processes via technology, you need to fully understand the process end-to-end, where all of the decision points are, and how changes in one part of the system will affect other sections.

What is the easiest way to visualize these business processes? Create a process map!

You don’t necessarily need lots of fancy symbols or expensive software to create one – they can be as simple as a few text boxes in a PowerPoint presentation, like this example that shows how an Account Executive may handle a new business demo lead that has been assigned to them from a Business Development Representative:

Basic Account Executive Process

Remember – it doesn’t need to be pretty, as long as it clearly communicates the information and decision points for the entire process. Once you have a process mapped out, you can visualize inefficiencies in the system, and determine if there’s an opportunity to automate part or all of the process.

Now that we know how the process works, how do we figure out what to automate?

WHY AUTOMATE, IF IT DOESN’T SOLVE A PROBLEM?
When it comes to utilizing automation for maximizing revenue, problem identification is key. What is the pain point that you’re trying to solve for, and how do you expect automation to solve for it? Working through a problem solving framework will help you to identify the issues, people involved, and determine and implement a solution. What do those steps look like?

Problem Identification: What is the biggest pain point, who is involved, and which systems?
Brainstorm the Solution: Research the system capabilities, and brainstorm potential solutions.
Make Predictions: What will happen, either positive or negative, if you implement the solution?
Test Your Ideas: Build a prototype, and test it in a sandbox. Does it behave as expected?
Evaluate: Was the solution effective, and did it solve the problem? What went right or wrong?
Present Your Results: Present to the stakeholders, and seek feedback. Are any changes necessary? If so, start back at step 1, and run through the problem-solving framework again.

Just because you can automate a process, doesn’t mean that you should. We don’t want to automate for automation’s sake! However, the tool you choose is just as important as the problem you’re trying to solve.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU USE THE WRONG TOOL FOR THE JOB?
Have you ever tried to cut a tomato with a claw hammer? Rather than getting uniform tomato slices for your sandwich, you just wind up with a squishy mess. Does that mean that the claw hammer wasn’t a good one? Nope. Was the tomato bad? No again. So why didn’t things work right when we tried to put them together?

It’s simple. The claw hammer was the wrong tool for the job.

The same thing goes when trying to choose the right piece of business technology to automate marketing processes.

Using the live chatbot on the corporate website to try to send a complex series of nurture emails to a prospect will most likely result in disaster. However, Pardot’s Engagement Studio is a solution that’s just right for the task!

Pardot’s Engagement Studio allows marketers to build responsive, intelligent, lead nurturing programs that engage prospects at the right time during their customer journey. At the click of a button, you can create steps to complete an action, set a trigger to listen for a specific event, or create rules to determine which path a prospect should take.

In the Engagement Studio program, you’ll be able to see how prospects are moving through each step, and ensure that the right actions are taking place at the perfect time.

Now that we’ve determined the problem and how to choose the right solution for implementing a solution, we need to measure the impact on our revenue.

WHAT TYPE OF ROI DO WE EXPECT TO SEE?
There are two main types of data benefits that we may see once an automated technological solution is implemented – qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative data seeks to describe a topic more than measure it, and may include items like increased customer satisfaction, and what a prospect’s attitude might be.

Quantitative data is structured and statistical, focusing on verifiable numbers instead of feelings. Prior to implementation, be sure to collect benchmarks to compare changes against. This will allow you to determine whether you’ve seen a positive or negative impact on your ROI due to the automation.

Now it’s time to make a data driven decision! Keep the following in mind:

Metrics are not enough – collect the right metrics. Ensure that you’re collecting the metrics that will allow you to make data driven decisions.
Having more metrics is not always better. Don’t get number paralysis – focus on the important metrics that take a reasonable amount of time to collect and analyze.
Don’t make value judgments on volume metrics. Quality over quantity is critical here.
Don’t assume the numbers tell the whole story. The most important part of sharing metrics is the story you tell to make sense of them!
Understand that your metrics may change over time. Good metrics now don’t always equal good metrics later. Re-evaluate the metrics you’re gathering and analyzing regularly to ensure you’re looking at the most relevant numbers.

MAXIMIZE REVENUE WITH TECHNOLOGY AND AUTOMATION
So, how can you make more money with technology and automation? By getting to know your processes and procedures, you can eliminate unnecessary steps, and automate steps to decrease the amount of necessary manual work that needs to be done.

You also have a problem solving framework at your fingertips, to employ whenever you see a pain point arise. Now that you understand how to determine the right tool for the job, you can more fully utilize your technology stack to the company’s benefit.

And finally, we are also able to measure the effectiveness of any automation and technological changes via qualitative and quantitative analysis, which will allow you to make the best data-driven decision for your company to maximize revenue.

To learn more information about Engagement Studio in Pardot, visit Trailhead, and check out the Pardot Engagement Studio for Pardot Lightning App badge.

We can help you maximize your revenue with technology and automation. Our experienced and professional consultants are at your service to design the business you want. Learn more about how we maximize revenue for our clients.

Why Should Sales Care About Marketing Automation?

This blog was originally posted on the Pardot.com on January 28, 2020.

“Why should sales care about marketing automation?”

As the Director of Institutional Sales Operations at The Princeton Review and with 7+ years in the sales and marketing operations industry, this is a question I’ve been asked time and time again.

I usually answer this question with a question: “Do you have large amounts of unqualified leads being assigned to your sales team, forcing them to waste time qualifying them?”

If the answer is yes, my recommendation is simple — the sales team should be working with the marketing team to develop a lead nurturing program, so that incoming prospects will be more qualified and in a buyers frame of mind prior to being turned over to the sales team.

IMPROVE LEAD QUALITY
“Why are my sales reps getting so many unqualified leads from marketing?”

This is a question no marketing team wants to answer.

Sales teams love receiving leads, but they hate working unqualified ones, as it’s a huge waste of time. They would much prefer to have all prospects who are sent to the sales team be ready to buy immediately. Preferably, they’re the perfect customer with lots of money, too.

While that’s a great dream, let’s come back down to reality.

If the sales team is only getting 100% qualified leads, then the criteria for what should be sent from marketing to sales is a bit too strict and should be relaxed. On the other hand, if the sales team is receiving a huge amount of completely unqualified leads that don’t want to have a sales conversation, we have a lead nurturing problem.

So what can we do about this?

Let’s take a closer look at the marketing funnel, and what it should accomplish.

MOVE PROSPECTS THROUGH THE MARKETING AND SALES FUNNEL
A basic marketing funnel has three parts.

Visitor: A prospect has interacted with our company, but we don’t yet have any other personally identifiable information on them except for IP address.
Marketing Lead (ML): We have been provided with some personally identifiable information, like an email, about the prospect. However, they are not ready to engage in a conversation with the sales team, or they don’t yet meet the criteria for passing a lead to sales.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): We’ve obtained enough information about the prospect to meet our criteria for passing a lead to the sales team, and the prospect is potentially ready to engage in a sales conversation.

Various methods will introduce prospects to different parts of the marketing funnel. For example, you may have a section on your website where people can sign up to receive notifications when new blog content is posted. They’re only signing up using an email address, so they enter the marketing funnel as a Marketing Lead (ML). However, in some of your blogs, you reference a piece of content that includes a feature comparison tool for your product. The feature comparison tool is a gated piece of content, so on the form, the prospect provides some additional information about themselves, like their name.

In general, those seeking information about different product features may be exhibiting buying signals, and it may be close to the right time to put those prospects in touch with the sales team. However, if you send those prospects immediately to sales, they might not be ready to have that conversation yet.

CREATE A PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE
Nurturing leads will help move the prospect smoothly through the marketing funnel, allowing the prospect to learn more information about your company, and warming them up to be open to having a conversation with the sales team about your product.

It also allows your company to slowly gather more information about the prospect via progressive profiling, and allows the company to build a more complete picture about the prospect so that the sales team can have a personalized conversation with them.

THE MOMENT MY SALES TEAM STARTED CARING ABOUT MARKETING AUTOMATION
My sales team is now completely bought in on the value of marketing automation, but it wasn’t always that way. It took some time to show them how automated lead nurturing could actually help them.

To get their buy in on this new process, the marketing team started by meeting with the sales team to discuss the goals for a new nurture plan, and what they were looking to accomplish after the prospects had completed the nurture program. This alignment help us identify the criteria required for sales to have a productive conversation with the prospect, and allowed marketing to map out a logical customer journey that we could support with various pieces of collateral.

Once the plan was approved by both sides, the marketing team got to work building this in our marketing automation platform, Salesforce Pardot.

HOW TO NURTURE LEADS IN PARDOT
Engagement Studio is the perfect tool for nurturing leads. What process did the marketing team take to create an Engagement Studio program for nurturing these leads?

We started by creating a segmentation list in Pardot that was used for enrolling prospects into the Engagement Studio nurture program.
From there, we created and identified lists in Pardot that contained prospects that should not be receiving this Engagement Studio program. We used this list as a suppression list.
Next, we used completion actions on each Top of Funnel (ToFu) or Middle of Funnel (MoFu) form that we decided should be included to enroll prospects in this nurture program, which added the prospects to your newly created segmentation list.
We then created the email templates that would be sent to prospects at specific stages during the nurture process.
Create a new Engagement Studio program. Add your lists, both enrollment and suppression.
Identify the business days and hours that you wish to send the emails from Engagement Studio, select the time zone, and determine whether you’d like prospects to enter the program more than once.
Then it was time to start building out the Engagement Studio program, using our enrollment and suppression lists, email templates, and email sending criteria (this is the fun part).
Finally, once we completed the Engagement Studio Program, we made sure to test the program in the Test tab to ensure the program worked as we envisioned.
In this Engagement Studio program, the marketing team nurtured leads via a series of emails which contained calls to action (CTA) that asked the prospect to download additional content. The marketing team utilized progressive profiling to gather additional information about the prospect during this journey, and if the prospect completed the entire program, they were assigned to the sales team for further follow up.

The sales team was extremely pleased with the prospects being assigned to them, as these prospects already had a good understanding about the company and what it could do for their business, and were interested in hearing about what those next steps in the buying process looked like. The sales team also could spend more time on the qualification calls speaking to the prospects about their specific pain points, rather than wasting time gathering basic information like their company name, as that information was already gathered during the nurture process.

INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY AND CLOSE MORE DEALS
Nurturing leads with Engagement Studio will help marketing provide sales with qualified, highly engaged prospects who are ready to have a sales conversation. By nurturing the leads, the marketing team can ensure that prospects have received appropriate information prior to a sales conversation and have taken actions which demonstrate buying signals. The sales team will spend less time trying to gather basic information in order to qualify prospects, and instead can spend their time having quality conversations with prospects instead.

So, why should sales care about marketing automation? It will help improve their lead quality, accelerate the marketing and sales funnel, drive personalized experiences, and ultimately, help them close more deals.

To learn more about how to build Engagement Studio programs in Pardot to qualify leads, visit Trailhead and check out the Pardot Lead Nurturing for Pardot Lightning App module.

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