Turn Your Inbound Leads into Qualified Sales Meetings

by Dafna Rolls, CEO of DRolls Associates and Fran Jakubowicz, CEO of Sunhouse Marketing

You invest so much in lead generation because you know how important it is to get the right leads. Social media makes it even easier, allowing you to quickly create campaigns and capture leads’ information with customized forms. You create compelling content and lead magnets such as white papers, videos, and webinars and spend huge budgets on traffic and ads. Every day, campaigns are analyzed and conversion funnels are optimized.

All of this is done with one goal – convert viewers and visitors into leads. But then, what happens next?

Time Is of the Essence

The goal of your campaigns and content is to generate leads – but the end-goal is to close deals and increase ROI. When someone fills out a form on your website or ad, they’re interested now. Ideally, you want to contact them within 24 hours or less. The longer you wait, the colder they get until they forget why they filled out that form in the first place.

That’s a lot of work when you start getting dozens of leads coming in every day. Sending out emails, texts, social media messages, and calling each one takes time and resources. One way to reduce the workload and ensure you don’t miss anyone is to automate whatever processes you can. Know your audience and how they prefer to be contacted. Facebook messages, texts, and emails can all be automated. Usually, those over 35 will prefer a call while those under 35 will prefer a message.

In many cases, the data in forms is incorrect and sales teams will need to spend time researching new contact information, which can often lead to missed opportunities. Before starting a lead generation campaign, it is critical to prepare and ensure you can handle the influx of leads. This means having the personnel ready to answer calls, research, and reach out to leads as they come in.

Communication is Key: Marketing & Sales

Usually, the marketing team generates leads while the sales team closes deals. It’s important not to look at these two processes and teams as completely separate. In order to create successful lead generation campaigns, the marketing team needs to create content and targeting based on information they get from market research as well as the sales team. Sales personnel are out there in the field talking to the audience. They know their pain points, understand the nuances, and know what makes them tic. Their input and cooperation will help the marketing team create better and more successful campaigns, which will lead to many more qualified leads.

On the other end, the sales team needs to communicate their successes and challenges with the leads they received so that the entire process can be optimized – not just the lead generation campaigns, but everything that comes afterwards.

Remember the end goal – closing deals. When sales and marketing teams understand what each team does and communicate openly and regularly, you’ll see the result in your bottom line.

Author Bio: Fran Jakubowicz

Fran Jakubowicz is the CEO of SunHouse Marketing, a full service digital marketing agency with a track record of excellence. A digital lead generation expert, Fran and her team have generated hundreds of thousands of leads and millions of dollars in sales for her clients. Working across multiple verticals including tech, health, pharmaceutical, finance, law, education, non-profit and eCommerce, Fran and her team have been helping organizations reach their digital goals since 2009.  

Author Bio: Dafna Rolls

Dafna is the Founder and CEO at D|Rolls Associates, a boutique Boston-based firm that provides companies around the globe with business development and meeting scheduling services, in the US and Europe. D|Rolls Associates helps companies maximize their growth potential by scheduling qualified sales meetings with inbound leads, outbound leads, and trade show attendees while providing in-depth insights into their target audience.