Consultants' Corner

How do marketing and sales collaborate to qualify leads and generate new business opportunities?

Marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs) are essential in a firm's growth strategy. Marketing activities should generate leads aligned with key industries, ideal client profiles and services. Sales activities then progress these leads into SQLs, where the sales/BD team identifies an active opportunity for deeper qualification. Unprogressed leads may return to nurturing. Typically, firms need 2-3 times more MQLs than SQLs, making lead data quality and CRM use critical.

A functionally integrated firm, not siloed, is better positioned for growth. Marketing and sales can collaborate by 1) Jointly designing and monitoring growth strategies. 2) Agreeing on key industries and ideal clients to generate high-quality leads. 3) Holding joint meetings to share best practices, fostering collaboration and reducing silos.

Amy FrankoAmy Franko Associates amy@amyfranko.com

Marketing excels at contact management, events and content, while BD is great at generating and executing conversations. For example, in an industry-specific webinar, marketing and BD can attract attendees: BD reaches out to prospects and referral sources, while marketing targets clients. Post-webinar, BD manages proactive outreach and marketing continues lead generation. Qualifying inbound leads can fall to either marketing or BD.The key is having a scorecard and process. Instead of pushing website leads to partners and phone leads to voicemail, use a scorecard to assess:

• Is the company in our target industries?

• Is the company the right size ($1-25MM, $50MM+)?

• Is this the type of service we want to grow (1040s vs. Corp returns)?

These parameters, paired with a clear process, guide the first discovery meeting.

Neil Barrow Rev Ops Advisors neil@revopsadvisors.com

Marketing and business development (BD) are distinct functions that collaborate closely across phases of a unified client development process. Marketing generally focuses more on the early phases, driving branding and lead-generation activities, such as research-based strategies and data mining to identify prospects. BD capitalizes on the results of marketing initiatives, converting opportunities into clients through trust-building, exploratory meetings, solution curation and the navigation of buying decisions.

In best practices, marketing and sales align their initiatives, sharing growth goals and cascading them through the firm by facilitating collaboration among its strategic practice areas.They treat practice areas as shared internal clients, focusing on each function's strengths to achieve goals. Synched initiatives help both groups reach targets, engage prospects, create compelling experiences, motivate action and expand client relationships over time.

Scott MooreThe Rainmaker Companies scott@therainmakercompanies.com

Interviews by Heather Tice