How to Build a High-Quality Sales Pipeline with Demand Generation

Let's talk about the Demand Conversion challenge. Below is the situation I see in ~50% of the companies I engage with. ** The better marketing becomes at creating demand, the more likely sales is dropping the ball on converting that demand to revenue ** The specifics: - Marketing shifts away from low-quality lead gen. - Marketing focuses on creating demand. - High-intent leads raise their hand to engage (e.g., demo request). - Qualified Lead growth reaches a new high. However: - Qualified Pipeline doesn't grow at the same rate. - Revenue doesn't grow at the same rate. - CEO and Sales Leader blame marketing. - Marketing pressured to do more lead gen. This isn't a marketing issue. ** It's a Marketing and Sales Alignment issue ** To fix this problem 👇 Review your demand conversion / inbound sales process. 1 - Marketing talks with Sales The issue starts with sales treating all marketing leads equally. Historically, marketing leads have been low quality, so sales have built a process for triaging low-quality leads. Align on treating the leads who want to talk with sales differently. 2 - Ensure you can measure lead to revenue. You need to measure lead to meeting to qualified pipeline with customer and lead enrichment to segment for qualification, routing, and stage progression to revenue.   3 - Assess if meetings happen. You will likely find that less than 40% of your high-intent leads meet with sales. The reason is a lack of urgency and efficiency in booking meetings. Effective automation can raise this to > 70%. 4 - Review your first call process. You will find SDRs taking first calls using a process designed for leads who don't want to talk to you. Instead, have AE's take first calls using a process optimized for qualified leads who WANT to talk with you. 5 - Align lead qualification between marketing & sales. You don't need MQLs and SQLs. Instead, it's one qualification criteria to route leads to sales. Adjust criteria based on what you learn by running a purposeful process. 6 - Determine if prospects need more education. You don't want sales spending the entire first call educating the prospect. The education process should be under 10 minutes. If it's longer, determine why and prioritize educating prospects before the first call. 7 - Verify sales criteria for Qualified Pipeline. Validate the degree of subjectivity in how sales convert stage 1 opportunities to Qualified Pipeline (ex: stage 2). There should be less subjectivity AND different criteria for leads who want to talk with you. 8 - Continually optimize for efficiency This process isn't "set it and forget it." You need an eye on performance with clear metrics & goals aligned across marketing and sales. Your volume and sales cycle will dictate how often to review. The above isn't visionary. It's data, logic, and systematic thinking. It's marketing and sales aligning to convert demand into revenue. Give it a shot. #b2bmarketing #b2bsales #leadership

Before worrying about creating and capturing demand, make sure you're converting existing demand effectively. Start at the Marketing <> Sales handoff. There's likely opportunity there to close gaps, operationalize the infrastructure, and increase handoff conversions. It typically comes down to: People, Process, Technology In a company I’ve partnered with recently we found that 30% of demo and pricing requests that raise their hand during working hours preferred to connect live on the phone, but of course we didn’t want to just stick a 1-800 number on the website and flood the sales team with junk calls and busy work. Instead we invested in technology that enabled us to auto-qualify upon form submission, allow the end user to select their choice of live phone call or booking a meeting, and only allowed those that were qualified to run through a live call router to connect with their Account Exec. This small change increased meeting held rates by 25% and sped up cycle times by 20%. 💡 Look for instances like this in your data! Odds are you’ll need to run some capacity models but could pick up tons of wasted pipeline that’s slipping through the cracks of your infrastructure.

We’re all deep into 2024 planning, so I thought I’d share how I do top-down and bottoms-up analysis to figure out our #DemandGeneration goals. 𝗧𝗼𝗽-𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻: 1. Take the business goal you have (annual sales) and multiply it by your pipeline coverage to know how much pipeline you need to generate as a business 2. Multiply that by your marketing contribution (for example, if marketing is expected to contribute 40% to revenue, assume you need to generate 40% of the total business pipeline) 3. Take your conversion rates and calculate how many meetings and hand-raisers you need each month and/or quarter to meet that pipeline number 𝗕𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗺𝘀-𝗨𝗽: 1. Using historical data, calculate your pipeline ROI (how much pipeline you generate from every marketing dollar you spend) 2. Take your budget and multiply it by your ROI, to figure out how much pipeline you can generate with that budget 3. With your conversion rates, calculate how many meetings and hand-raisers you need each month and/or quarter  These two numbers will probably not match - which is where you have to start thinking about efficiencies and growth to make sure you support as much pipeline as you can! Once you have a basic model like this, you can start to introduce other variables like: 📉 𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆: not all months are created equal for sales 🔄 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗰𝘆𝗰𝗹𝗲: your pipeline might not close in the same quarter you generated it 🌳 𝗦𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: some quarters will be slower than others depending on what/who/how you sell You can get as complicated as you want, but at the end of the day what matters is that you understand the business and what levers marketing can pull to support it! #B2BMarketing #MarketingStrategy

The 6 ways I see pipeline generation actually working in 2024: 1) Track job changes of your customers and advocates. Use tools like UserGems 💎 to ensure you dont miss anyone. Reach out to those folks not with an ask, but to keep in touch. Offer value and nurture the relationship. 2) Ask for referrals from your best customers. Sometimes all you have to do is ask. Can they intro you to their former company? Their friend who is at another company? They probably can, you just have to suss out the motivations and WHY they would make this intro. 3) Generate reviews (G2) and case studies from your best customers then use those advocates for reference calls. Platforms like Deeto are simplifying the collection process. Now, all you have to do is ask. 4) Find partners that sell to the same audience and align closely with your mission. Collaborate on joint research studies, podcasts, events, and referrals. There are many ways to partner on things, 1 + 1 can = 3. 5) Ensure you and your exec team are producing thought leadership on LinkedIn. The posts should have a common theme and POV. The key here is actually following up with prospects who fit your ICP that like/comment on all the posts. This seems obvious but isn't always the reality. 6) Curated IRL Events - people want to connect but in the right way. A curated room, with a sizable audience, without an agenda. We do this 12+ times a year at Sales Assembly and it works wonders. What won't work? Sending me a 5 paragraph thesis essay as the first message after we connect on LI then sending me a "did you see my previous message, here's a link to my calendar" follow up 2 days later. TLDR: Reduce the volume, increase the personalization, and ask yourself "would I respond to this?"