With St. Patrick’s Day coming up this week, I got to thinking about the luck of the Irish. In the past, the business of sales was a bit like hunting for a four-leaf clover in a vast field of green. Sales people spent time using techniques like flipping through the phone book to find new prospects and if they were lucky, every so often they would strike gold and close a deal.
The new world of inbound marketing and marketing automation tools help give sales teams a map to find that four-leaf clover in record time. Instead of dealing with an abundance of unqualified leads, new prospects enter the marketing pipeline and can be reviewed before being moved over to sales. Leads from websites, trade shows and third-party email campaigns are scored, graded and nurtured until they are sales-ready. This allows sales people to focus their time on what they are good at – closing the deal – without having to waste time on a treasure hunt. Micro-level ROI reporting also helps the marketing team to analyze costly initiatives – if you’ve been investing time in one location with no results, there’s a good chance you’ll never the elusive four-leaf clover in that field! It’s time to move on to greener pastures.
