We’ve all seen it happen: at the end of the quarter, realizing that the quarterly goal has not been met, companies scramble to quickly close a few more deals. This is often done by spending on short-term lead generation, including cold-calling campaigns and trying to quickly close immature leads before the quarter’s end.
Needless to say, this is the most expensive and inefficient method of lead generation and usually drains budgets from subsequent quarters and campaigns. More importantly, these short-term initiatives typically fail because accelerating the buying process can’t be done at the very last minute and without any prior planning.
In order to help B2B organizations end the stress and expense of the “end of quarter scramble,” we have developed the following four steps to help your organization build a more predictable and sustainable pipeline from quarter to quarter.
1. Narrow your target audience
To stabilize your pipeline, you should actually narrow rather than expand your target audience. Through the use of segmentation tools, successful B2B companies are defining and targeting their marketing databases to focus on the sectors that are converting into legitimate sales activity. By narrowing their focus, these companies are able to personalize their messaging and develop content and campaigns more relevant to their target audiences, resulting in shorter sales cycles.
2. Help Sales Step on the Accelerator
A better understanding of buyer needs and an automated stream of relevant messaging to targeted buyers should accelerate the sales process. And this in turn would reduce the amount of deals stuck in the pipeline.
Case studies have consistently shown that unclogging deals and reducing funnel leaks makes companies less reliant on sales teams having to save the quarter with eleventh-hour deals.
Many B2B companies are supplementing marketing automation systems with sales acceleration tools. These tools enable reps to focus on deals in the pipeline with personalized attention via trackable emails and real-time actions. They not only allow sales reps to track ongoing activity and history, they also provide real-time alerts and triggers to allow reps to focus on the prospects that are active and ready to buy.
3. Converting Cold Calling to Warm Calling
Instead of pouring money into “dialing for dollars,” more B2B companies are shifting their teleprospecting investments to qualifying and nurturing prospects that have already shown some interest in their solution.
By focusing on prospects that have had some prior contact, inside sales or call centers typically have much higher success rates in creating opportunities for the sales team because they are spending time on “warm calling” rather than cold calling.
Sales intelligence tools not only allow sales reps to do “pinpoint prospecting,” they also help to identify “trigger events,” which can drive short-term sales opportunities. Real-time lead alerts can increase connect rates by up to 10X. Reps armed with website visit history, campaign and detailed prospect information have more confidence and more information to effectively engage with interested prospects. The result is a much higher success rate then traditional, often futile, cold calling.
4. Start Planning Two Quarters Out
Automation and sales intelligence tools can help accelerate the flow of qualified leads into the pipeline, but the fundamental shift for many companies is improving the long-term visibility of pending deals.
One of the first steps to achieving longer-term visibility is measuring the average conversion rates for prospects through different stages of the sales funnel. That means measuring from initial inquiries to qualified leads and then from opportunities to closed deals.
While measuring the flow from inquiry to close is an important step, the hard work of improving the conversion rates at each stage is heavily dependent on a company’s lead nurturing programs. Lead nurturing programs help increase the volume of sales-ready leads in the pipeline. They allow the sales team to close out the quarter by focusing on the truly hot leads that are likely to buy, while marketing continues to warm up those longer-term opportunities that need education.
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Obviously, it’s impossible to ensure that all sales reps will start reaching quota, but implementing these tools and processes will have a significant impact on shortening sales cycles and improving win rates. With these in place, the quarterly close can be a smoother and more predictable process rather than a late-night panic.
Tags: lead nutruring, Sales acceleration
