The CRAP Report

“Sales can’t close anything we send over to them!”

“Marketing just throws anything with a name over the wall and expects us to close it!”

We’ve all heard the same story, time and again.  Marketing and sales can’t get along and become unified like they should because they’re constantly playing the blame game.  Marketing blames sales because they don’t close the leads they generate, and Sales blames marketing for sending them nothing worth closing.  The gap that exists between marketing and sales can be bridged, and it can be done so by teleprospecting. 

There’s often confusion surrounding where teleprospecting sits.  Is it a marketing function?  Is it a sales function?  There are great answers to each of those questions.  Teleprospecting is really more of a marketing function because they’re taking what falls into the top of the funnel, qualifying it to pass over to sales.  Sales may say that teleprospecting is more of their responsibility because of the fact that they are qualifying prospects to purchase something, and that once they engage a prospect in a buying discussion, that it naturally falls under the sales umbrella.  I think the answer lies somewhere right in the middle.

Teleprospecting actually holds the key to making a unified sales and marketing team!  What is one of marketing’s key functions?  To get leads over to sales for them to follow up on (elementary, I know, but bear with me).  Sales, then, has the responsibility of closing the leads that marketing sends over (duh).  How do we make the best use of the money spent by marketing to bring in leads and the best use of sales’ time to close them?  Teleprospecting!  Look, marketing spends a lot of time (and money) on filling the funnel and your sales team is too valuable to spend their time wading through the thousands of names that marketing has brought in.  Even if you’re lucky enough to have a marketing team that brings in marketing qualified leads, with a highly skilled team of lead development, lead nurturing, business development reps sifting through those MQL’s, qualifying them into sales qualified leads, you’re really making the most of your both your marketing dollars and sales time spent.  Teleprospecting, then, is the natural bridge between marketing and sales. 

Teleprospecting bridges the gap between marketing and sales for three reasons: 

1.  An effective lead development/nurturing team allows marketing to see a return on their efforts:  As BDR’s qualify leads in and out of the sales cycle, marketing gets a real time view into what programs are and are not effective, allowing for future campaigns to have a greater focus.

2.  A highly skilled team of teleprospectors allows your sales team to focus on what they do best:  As BDR’s send over qualified leads to sales, sales reps are better using their time because they’re doing what they do best, selling.  Who better to sell to than prospects that’ve been qualified by your BDR’s?

3.  A high performing team of business development reps unifies marketing and sales into one bottom line effecting team:  No longer will marketing complain about sales nor sales about marketing, because teleprospecting will function as the grease to the machine.  Teleprospecting qualifies everything that comes in and passes over everything that has merit.

If there is one way to bring marketing and sales together, it’s through a teleprospecting team.  A good lead generation/nurturing group is going to make the difference between a great marketing return on investment and an even greater amount of closed business because teleprospecting allows both departments to do what they do best.