Stop us if you’ve ever had this experience: marketing generates leads it contends are qualified. They pass the leads over to sales. Sales either 1) works the leads and says, actually, they’re not so hot or 2) abandons outreach efforts quickly because they would rather spend time progressing deals than chasing people who won’t respond to a call or email.
Suddenly the two departments are at each others’ throats like Tom and Jerry.
But this common occurrence doesn’t have to be so common. Sales and marketing can move past this finger-pointing by:
- Scrapping the traditional marketing tactics that lead to in-fighting
- Aligning on the right accounts to target
- Understanding when to reach out to buyers
Let’s look at how you can move toward this radical new world of sales and marketing co-existence.
Ditch the Forms and MQLs
Traditionally MQL has stood for “Marketing Qualified Lead,” but sales teams might be tempted to instead call them “Maybe Qualified Leads.”
Individuals often become an MQL through activities like:
- Filling out a form to read content
- Attending or registering for a webinar
- Stopping by the booth at an event
- Requesting more info about a product or services
Thanks to the magic of arbitrary lead scoring, if a buyer does enough of these (How many? Pick a number!), suddenly they’re an MQL. Marketing tosses them over the wall to sales and can confidently point to how many things they’ve done!
Here’s the problem: MQLs have a failure rate of 95 to 99%.
Marketers have not had access to the toolkit that allows them to deeply understand their buyers, leading to lots of guesswork. 97% of website visitors don’t fill out a form, and over two-thirds of the buying journey is complete by the time that person filled out a form (more on this later).
At 6sense we recommend ditching the forms (and cold calls and spam emails) in favor of a frictionless experience for your audience. If forms only serve to stop someone from engaging further, or don’t result in a worthwhile lead, what’s the point?
“We do not gate any of our content,” says Grace Kleveland Kupczak, Senior Manager, Digital Strategy & Growth Marketing at 6sense. “We just want to get people down the funnel. If they can’t read it on our site, they’re going to go read it on a competitor’s page. When they’re ready, they can raise their hand.”
Target the Right Accounts — Together
At the heart of sales and marketing friction? Misalignment on which accounts to target.
If marketing is focused on quantity over quality (because of audacious pipeline goals) and sales is only targeting the big fish (because they see it as the fastest route to revenue) they’ll quickly come to an impasse.
The truth is, roughly only 10% of your buyers are in-market at any given time. Targeting the other 90% isn’t necessarily a waste of time, but it needs to be done right.
Marketing needs to know which accounts are actively in-market so their campaigns (and leads) can be broken down into two categories:
- Wider, more general brand and awareness plays. These should be more passive and aimed at nurturing and educating the market.
- Campaigns targeted at in-market accounts. These are laser-focused and aim to influence active opportunities (or turn in-market buyers into opportunities). These campaigns aim to influence buyers and progress them through their buying stages and work in lockstep with sales for a cohesive buyer experience.
Intent data — a collation of activities and engagements made by buyers — can reveal which accounts are actively searching for your products and services. AI can match these intent signals to specific accounts and can also analyze the intent signals to predict where an account is in its research journey.
This allows you to know:
- Which accounts are considering a purchase, so you know who to focus on
- What each account cares about, so you know the most effective way to persuade them with marketing and sales outreach
- How close they are to deciding, so you know when accounts are ripe for direct outreach
6sense’s revenue platform align marketing and sales by uniting them on the same data and surfacing the same insights to both teams.
Using intent data will naturally break down barriers between sales and marketing and provide crystal-clear intelligence on where to spend your time and money — and when outreach is most likely to be fruitful.
Timing is Everything
Research by 6sense found 83% of buyers have already picked a winner before they speak to sales.
That means the work that happens before you hear from a buyer is extra critical. Marketing and sales need to be aligned on how to influence prospects earlier than ever.
That same research concludes there are really two buying stages: Selection and Validation.
The Selection stage is the first 70% of a buying journey (the part that also happens anonymously). In this stage buyers are doing their own research, comparing products and services, asking peers for recommendations — everything except talking to you. By the end of this stage, they’ve usually already decided where to spend their money.
The Validation stage is the last 30% of the buying journey. This is where you might get the chance to talk to the buyer. And if you haven’t been influencing them during the selection process, you’re only getting to talk to them because they’re doing due diligence. Unless your competitor fumbles the ball, you’re not going to win.
If you follow traditional lead acquisition and handoff methods, you’re only getting through to the buyers when they’re in the validation stage and you’ve already lost a ton of opportunities.
Conclusion
A platform like 6sense can help you time outreach with:
- Predictive analytics that reveal which companies are likely early in their buying journey.
- An AI email assistant to help warm up accounts and scale personalized outreach.
- Automatic enrollment of prospects into specific campaigns based on real-time activity so you can influence buyers while they’re still in their Selection phase.
It’s time to stop quarreling over MQLs, and look for ways to move beyond them. A form fill is just one signal from one individual who is (hopefully) part of a larger buying team on a months-long journey.
Sales and marketing can move past this squabbling.
- Ditch the traditional lead acquisition tactics that lead to fights
- Align on the right accounts that both should be targeting using intent data
- Reach buyers at the right time through a combination of AI, predictive analytics, and smarter campaign building.
