Nurturing Sales Opportunities - How to increase pipeline conversion

How great would it be for an organization if sales can close all the opportunities that get added to the sales pipeline! Reality is that organizations are elated if they can convert half the number of opportunities into deals. There are quite a few opportunities that get stalled and languish in the funnel for various reasons. In some cases sales continue to pursue such opportunities but more often than not sales people tend to move on to greener pastures. This is the classic “last mile problem”! It’s a shame that companies spend a lot of time, energy and dollars in creating demand, nurturing leads and generating opportunities but not following all the way through to close. Part of the problem is sales people inherently lack the patience and perseverance to work on Leads and Opportunities beyond a certain point because they have to meet quarterly goals or in some cases monthly goals.

Here is where Marketing can step in and help. Imagine a situation where Sales has ready access to content and nurture processes developed by Marketing to specifically address concerns and overcome hurdles that sales runs into during the late stages of the sales funnel. Some of the typical challenges are:

• ROI and TCO justification: Most organizations lack a good framework or methodology to measure the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and also justify spend for a product or service they are buying. This is where vendors can help create whitepapers, case studies and tools that their prospective buyers can use to create a case for executive approval.

• Risk Mitigation: Most sales methodologies talk about how prospective buyers tend to start worrying about risk as they approach the final stages of purchase.

            

                    1. Will my vendor be around in a year’s time?
                    2. Will my vendor’s service and support organization help me with deploying the 
                        product or service?
                    3. Will I be able to influence my vendor’s product roadmap to align with my business goals?

There are the kinds of questions that sales people have to field and might end up losing the deal to a competitor because they continue to push the sale without giving much heed to such concerns. Again, Marketing can be the perfect ally for sales in such situations. Marketing can create great content and programs to introduce prospective buyers to case studies, implementation processes, best practices etc. and also invite them to user groups and customer success programs.

Marketing should have regular conversations with their sales counterparts and get a good understanding of the typical “deal blockers” that sales runs into and design nurture programs specifically to addresses such issues.

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