3 Reasons Why Your Sales Reps Aren't Converting Your Marketing Leads
Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 3:51 am
Buyer behavior has changed profoundly, directly impacting the effectiveness of traditional prospecting levers used by salespeople. Calling, door-to-door sales, and trade fairs are now completely out of line with buyer expectations.
The buyer conducts the majority of his purchasing considerations on his own on the Internet: he first seeks to validate whether his problem absolutely must be resolved. He then identifies and compares the solutions available to him. He retains the one that seems most relevant to him and finally seeks to validate that his choice is the best.
In this reflection, the buyer no longer appreciates aggressive cold prospecting, he no longer expects a company to sell but rather to demonstrate to him throughout his purchasing process that it is the best to help him solve his problem and achieve his objectives. The marketing department has a leading role to play here .
Aware of these developments, you regularly carry out marketing actions aimed at peru email list generating qualified leads for your salespeople . Unfortunately, rather than thanking you for your work, they question the quality of the marketing leads transmitted.
Generally, I see it very regularly in the field, marketing questions the skills of salespeople who fail to convert these marketing leads. And there, it clashes!
To reconcile marketing and sales and above all to enable you to improve your performance, here are 3 reasons which prevent your salespeople from converting your marketing leads.
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⚠ Reason #1 – You’re not aligning marketing and sales
One of the challenges for companies today is to align marketing and sales. As we saw in the preamble, marketing plays an increasingly important role in generating leads.
Your website, emails and social networks are important sources of leads, but to take full advantage of them, it is essential to align your marketing and sales objectives and to precisely define what a qualified prospect is.
Very often, I meet very competent marketing directors who, due to lack of time or opportunities, build and implement their strategy only within their department. However, due to their knowledge of the field, salespeople are a mine of information that should not be overlooked.
If your salespeople are failing to convert your marketing leads, it is most likely because you have not defined together the typical profile of the ideal prospect.
It very often happens that marketing relies on an approach, certainly relevant, of the marketing persona to build its strategy but it is essential to couple it with the real vision of the salespeople.
⚠ Reason #2 – Your marketing leads are not being nurtured enough
As we have seen previously, the buyer conducts most of his purchasing considerations alone and searches for information on the internet. The buyer no longer expects you to sell your solution but rather to demonstrate that you are really looking to solve his problem.
In this situation, you need to offer your prospects quality content to help them move forward in their thinking and make a decision. Preferably the right one! We're talking about Lead Nurturing here .
Remember, the buyer only accepts contact from the salesperson – and often even contacts him himself – when it comes to confirming his final decision.
If your salespeople are failing to convert your marketing leads, it's likely that they haven't had enough opportunity to view relevant content from you and that it doesn't fully position you as the expert they can trust today.
⚠ Reason #3 – Your marketing leads are not mature enough
When a company contacts me to tell me about their problem converting marketing leads, very often, they do not pass them on to sales at the right time.
Salespeople cannot convert marketing leads that are not in the buying decision phase in the short term. Very often, marketing actually confuses Leads with Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL).
A lead is a prospect who has expressed interest in your business by interacting with one or more of your contents. For example, they downloaded a white paper or clicked on one of your emails.
A Marketing Qualified Lead is a lead who has demonstrated through his actions that he is in the final phase of the purchasing process. Through the nature of the content he has viewed and his behavior on your website, the MQL has shown you his maturity. Here, for example, he may have downloaded a customer case and visited your pricing page several times.
The buyer conducts the majority of his purchasing considerations on his own on the Internet: he first seeks to validate whether his problem absolutely must be resolved. He then identifies and compares the solutions available to him. He retains the one that seems most relevant to him and finally seeks to validate that his choice is the best.
In this reflection, the buyer no longer appreciates aggressive cold prospecting, he no longer expects a company to sell but rather to demonstrate to him throughout his purchasing process that it is the best to help him solve his problem and achieve his objectives. The marketing department has a leading role to play here .
Aware of these developments, you regularly carry out marketing actions aimed at peru email list generating qualified leads for your salespeople . Unfortunately, rather than thanking you for your work, they question the quality of the marketing leads transmitted.
Generally, I see it very regularly in the field, marketing questions the skills of salespeople who fail to convert these marketing leads. And there, it clashes!
To reconcile marketing and sales and above all to enable you to improve your performance, here are 3 reasons which prevent your salespeople from converting your marketing leads.
New call-to-action
⚠ Reason #1 – You’re not aligning marketing and sales
One of the challenges for companies today is to align marketing and sales. As we saw in the preamble, marketing plays an increasingly important role in generating leads.
Your website, emails and social networks are important sources of leads, but to take full advantage of them, it is essential to align your marketing and sales objectives and to precisely define what a qualified prospect is.
Very often, I meet very competent marketing directors who, due to lack of time or opportunities, build and implement their strategy only within their department. However, due to their knowledge of the field, salespeople are a mine of information that should not be overlooked.
If your salespeople are failing to convert your marketing leads, it is most likely because you have not defined together the typical profile of the ideal prospect.
It very often happens that marketing relies on an approach, certainly relevant, of the marketing persona to build its strategy but it is essential to couple it with the real vision of the salespeople.
⚠ Reason #2 – Your marketing leads are not being nurtured enough
As we have seen previously, the buyer conducts most of his purchasing considerations alone and searches for information on the internet. The buyer no longer expects you to sell your solution but rather to demonstrate that you are really looking to solve his problem.
In this situation, you need to offer your prospects quality content to help them move forward in their thinking and make a decision. Preferably the right one! We're talking about Lead Nurturing here .
Remember, the buyer only accepts contact from the salesperson – and often even contacts him himself – when it comes to confirming his final decision.
If your salespeople are failing to convert your marketing leads, it's likely that they haven't had enough opportunity to view relevant content from you and that it doesn't fully position you as the expert they can trust today.
⚠ Reason #3 – Your marketing leads are not mature enough
When a company contacts me to tell me about their problem converting marketing leads, very often, they do not pass them on to sales at the right time.
Salespeople cannot convert marketing leads that are not in the buying decision phase in the short term. Very often, marketing actually confuses Leads with Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL).
A lead is a prospect who has expressed interest in your business by interacting with one or more of your contents. For example, they downloaded a white paper or clicked on one of your emails.
A Marketing Qualified Lead is a lead who has demonstrated through his actions that he is in the final phase of the purchasing process. Through the nature of the content he has viewed and his behavior on your website, the MQL has shown you his maturity. Here, for example, he may have downloaded a customer case and visited your pricing page several times.