Sales and marketing — two words that work hand-in-hand in any business. No matter how great of a marketing department you have, if your sales department can’t close the deal or know how to process and take advantage of leads, you’re spending good money after bad. In the same token, a really good sales department that can’t get enough leads to keep your team busy is costing you money, time and a lot of aggravation.
Start by assessing all of your marketing and advertising efforts. Break it down by media market like online versus outdoor versus print. Try to track your lead generations to the marketing efforts you’ve done. Figure out how many leads you get from anyone of the media market sources and figure out how much money you’re spending in that market to get those leads. What you’re trying to assess is your lead cost to generate one lead.
Then you need to assess your sales team and ask yourself how many leads come in versus how many leads are closed for a given time. Reassess all of the tools the sales people have and their ability to use them effectively.
It’s important to think of these two areas of your business as working hand-in-hand to support each other. Have monthly meetings where you bring both departments together and brainstorm ideas of ways to generate better quality leads. Try and implement a few of the suggested ideas and try to track an idea’s viability by what it generates.