MQLs to Revenue

Since 2008, Frantz Group has been taking MQLs deeper into the funnel for clients. Today, we’d like to discuss some of the approaches that have been successful with our clients, real tactics that you can employ in your efforts to finish out 2013 with additional revenue from your existing sales funnel.

Marketing must work with sales to help push deals toward revenue. The old model of tossing MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) over the sales fence and walking away is ineffective. Buyers are too knowledgeable which means advanced content is required; the buying process is long and complex with multiple buying influences that must be understood and addressed.

An approach that has worked well is a solution we call sales aligned nurturing. It involves pairing one of our senior business development professionals with one or more outside account executives. They work together as a team, pooling their knowledge, dynamically adjusting assignments and working out of the same CRM system. In this arrangement, the leader is the outside account executive. He/she picks the accounts and establishes the sales strategy and key tactics, but typically asks for input from our professional because of their experience. The kind of work that can be done to advance an MQL includes:

  1. Buying process – figure out who’s involved, what their role is, timeframe, steps, etc. This involves calling within the account as well as online research.
  2. Offline research – reading quarterly and annual reports looking for anything related to the solution being promoted; researching competitors for data that could be included in a sales presentation.
  3. Content – uncover content needs and communicate back to marketing to address
  4. Provide the human contact needed to nurture and keep share of mind. Pure mechanical touches like email and direct mail are good, but don’t carry the value of personalized human contact.
  5. Setting up meetings – reaching out to various contacts, confirming their role and then either reporting back or issuing the meeting request

Often as part of these solutions, the senior business development professional will also have a background marketing assignment as well. Typically it would be doing qualified lead gen to break into new accounts.

Frantz Group is in a perfect position to deal with these changing roles between sales and marketing because we generally work with both departments – we are typically hired by marketing yet deliver our results to sales. We have open communication between both departments and keep them up to date about our business process as we nurture their prospects to MQLs and beyond. We’re happy to share our insights with you, and wish you success as the year comes to a close. We will be following this article with additional topics and suggestions for how best to grow your revenue for the remainder of the year, and we hope you find these insights to be helpful.

We welcome you to engage us with for further discussion on this topic, to do so, please register your interest.