The Final Step to Marketing Excellence: Step Seven - Sales Qualified Leads

David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
| Raven Guru Marketing http://www.ravenguru.com/

The Final Step to Marketing Excellence: Step Seven - Sales Qualified Leads

The Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence are:

  1. Strategy
  2. Product
  3. Markets
  4. Brand
  5. Communications
  6. Lead Generation
  7. Sales Qualified Leads

Sales Qualified Leads

The Marketing and sales funnel is most effective when buyers move from one buying phase to the next; inquiries to leads, leads to Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), MQLs to Sales Qualified leads (SQLs) and SQLs to closed business. 

Inbound Marketing Lead Process

Moving buyers through each phase requires more than cold calling, advertising or digital marketing alone. If the objective is to build robust and growing sales pipelines with sales qualified leads, then the information communicated must progress in depth and relevance as the buyers moves from the inquiry phase to purchasing. This is referred to as lead nurturing.

Lead nurturing requires a range of high quality, personalized content to be shared with the targeted market. Content should be created that is relevant for each level/member (users to the actual decision maker) of the buyer community to address concerns related to benefits, features, training, operations and ongoing support. When buyers are offered content that answers questions, confirms thoughts or expands their interest, the content is consumed. Consumed content becomes a part of the daily work discussions, meetings and can be even shared as part of the professional social media network. As content is shared within a social media network, new interest is generated for the company, solution or product. Content that attracts and holds the interest of qualified buyers establishes you as a valid vendor. Moreover, the greater the relevance of the content to the buyer’s needs and stage of the buying journey, the greater number of leads that will convert into prospects and prospects into sales.

The lead stages are as follows:

  • Inquiries – Inquiries represent the conversion of a contact to a known prospect.
  • Marketing Qualified Leads – MQLs are contacts that fits the definition of the desired customer.
  • Sales Accepted Leads – Sales Accepted leads are MQLs meriting assignment to a sales representative with the expectation they will engage with Sales when contacted.
  • Sales Qualified Leads – Leads become SQLs when they evolve into an opportunity. If SQLs are addressed with best-in-class sales methodologies and supported by sales engineers and marketing they should convert into closed/won business.
  • Closed Business – A Closed deal can signify success, failure or delay. Buyers can choose to make a purchase from the company (Won), purchase from a competitor (Lost) or decide to take no action.

Raven Guru Marketing will transform your marketing strategies and campaigns into effective Inbound Marketing lead generation engines to increase the number of qualified leads, improve lead conversion to prospects and ultimately close/win more sales.

Read the Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence white paper to learn more and kick start your 2017 sales.


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