You have a sales team that excels in key account management, but you\u2019d like more prospective clients. So what do you do? Invest in marketing communication, or in sales?<\/p>\n
Take our client, Zetes: 25 of its 90 employees in the Belgian branch have a sales role, a third of which are internal. The others take to the road as key account managers and business developers. \u201cThe key account managers keep clients warm and happy, which they\u2019re better at than canvassing, but it\u2019s not the right way to reach all your potential customers,\u201d points out Director Herv\u00e9 Toussaint at a recent Business Meets IT seminar on marketing automation.<\/p>\n
Zetes could have chosen to recruit hunters \u2013 sales people who are happy to canvass \u2013 but they opted for a different route. Our client has put all their faith in lead nurturing. \u201cTraditional lead generation on its own doesn\u2019t work any more,\u201d says Toussaint. Zetes wasn\u2019t generating enough leads from telemarketing and trade exhibitions, for instance, and the quality of the leads they did generate was disappointing. So it\u2019s no surprise that 80% of these leads are not followed up by sales people. \u201cAnd this was the case for us too.\u201d<\/p>\n
With lead nurturing, Zetes uses marketing communication campaigns that focus on the right products for the right audience at the right time. If you approach the buyer too soon, it\u2019s possible they won\u2019t be interested yet. Sometimes your prospective client opts to buy the product six months later, hopefully not from a competitor who gets their timing right. Lead nurturing helps you appeal to the buyer with the right message at the right time. \u201cWe\u2019re no longer concentrating on our selling process, but on the prospective client\u2019s buying process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Specifically, Zetes has put all its contacts in Salesforce, which is linked to eTrigue for marketing automation, email marketing and lead scoring. Potentially good leads are passed on to the marketing team who check where the prospective client is in their buying process. The sales people then only contact the lead when they are registered as being ready to buy in Salesforce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your sales team excels in key account management, but like more leads. So what do you do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,8,4],"tags":[272,78,112,315,275],"department":[510],"media":[545],"topic":[523,512,513,522],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n