Does Your Marketing & Sales Engagement Sync with the Prospects Interests?

Despite highlighting this problem for many years, I’m still regularly dumbfounded when I see what Marketing and Sales organizations do when they engage with prospective buyers after they’ve expressed interest.  This practice regularly exasperates buyers, and I would contend that it’s a major reason buyers look elsewhere after expressing initial interest in a particular company / product / service / solution.

This is the type of scenario that leads to the problem I’m referring to:

• Marketing formulates an appealing value proposition for a target market segment
• A marketing campaign uses typical awareness programs such as white papers and webinars to create awareness and attract prospective buyer interest
• A prospective buyer sees this, the specific value proposition connects with their needs and they express interest by responding to the call-to-action for the marketing program
• Marketing immediately get the prospect into their marketing database for follow-up
• Marketing assign a tracking identifier to designate which campaign / program / webinar / landing page / offer / etc. originated this lead
• The marketing lead qualification and nurturing process kicks in – usually based on a set of standard scripts and progression steps to eventually get a qualified lead to Sales.

But what does marketing do with the tracking identifier that links to the specific value proposition which is the key reason why a prospect expressed interest?

• They primarily use the tracking identifier to analyze the effectiveness of a campaign / program / webinar / landing page / offer / etc. to determine what’s working and what they should continue doing, change, update or drop.
• However, what many marketing organizations fail to do sufficiently is to use the tracking identifier to determine how to specifically engage with each prospect relative to their specific needs – the reason they expressed interest in the first place.
• What is frustrating for buyers is that they see a great value proposition and offer that attracts their attention, but when they express interest they are dumped into the generic marketing sausage factory.

And what happens when Sales get the qualified lead?  The tracking identifier might be visible, but is there anything to highlight what it means and identify how sales should specifically engage with each prospect relative to why they expressed interest?  From what I’ve seen over the years, sales tend to pay insufficient attention to this – they jump on the lead and use the standard selling cycle process to engage with prospects.

The buyer’s perspective and interests get lost in the internal marketing and sales processes.

And what does this look like from a prospective buyer’s perspective?  Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes.  The buyer expresses interest because a very specific value proposition attracted their attention, but the engagement process with the vendor is mostly based on the vendor’s processes and perspective to eventually get a sale.  This is downright frustrating for buyers and makes vendors look incompetent because they can’t connect the dots between why the buyer expressed interest and how they engage with the buyer.

It’s a buyer’s market; the buying cycle takes precedence over the selling cycle.  It’s tough to find prospects and convert them into sales – improve your conversions by paying attention to how your marketing and sales organizations engage with buyers relative to their expressed specific interests.

Your comments are always welcome.
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