Creating Marketing OKRs That Support the Sales Team
The most successful marketing teams have one thing in common: they understand the value of a lead generation strategy. They know how to generate quality leads and nurture them into sales-ready customers. But what happens when the marketing team gets ahead of itself and starts pulling in more leads than the sales team can handle? It’s time to set up OKRs that keep both sides working together instead of against each other.
In the past, sales and marketing were two separate teams that didn’t often agree on goals. Sales would say their quota wasn’t big enough, while marketing would say the leads they delivered were subpar. This divide between teams leads to siloed thinking and a lack of cohesion across functions. The “sales vs. marketing” mentality is rooted in the idea that marketing generates leads while sales generates revenue.
In the past, sales and marketing were two separate teams that didn’t often agree on goals. Sales would say their quota wasn’t big enough, while marketing would say the leads they delivered were subpar. This divide between teams leads to siloed thinking and a lack of cohesion across functions. The “sales vs. marketing” mentality is rooted in the idea that marketing generates leads while sales generates revenue.
But now it's time for an upgrade: To build a more cohesive organization that can adapt to changing customer needs faster than ever before, you'll need to reevaluate your approach to setting OKRs for both teams.
If you want to build a team that works together instead of against each other (and who wouldn't?), then here are four steps for creating effective OKRs for both salespeople and marketers:
With OKRs, these roles are better defined. Marketing can provide more support for sales by creating OKRs with an emphasis on lead quality instead of lead quantity. So how exactly can marketers provide lead quality?
But how exactly can marketers provide lead quality? OKRs are a way to help make sure your team is on the same page. They can be used to help teams focus on goals that align with the company’s strategy, and provide clarity around what success looks like for each role.
But how do you know if you're creating an effective set of OKRs? It’s important that your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound). For example, instead of setting a goal of selling X number of products in Q2 2019 (which doesn't really give anyone enough context), create a specific goal like "generate $X in revenue by generating X leads per month through email marketing campaigns."
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is a long-term strategy that requires more time than most people are willing to invest in it. However, if you have the resources and budget, it can help sales get more deals closed by engaging with leads at a higher level.
Lead nurturing is the process of educating your prospects about your product or service through content marketing—a combination of email, webinars and social media posts—and sending them messages on their preferred channels at the most opportune times. For example, if you offer a business intelligence platform for customer relationship management (CRM), then you might send an email about how to improve CRM processes after someone visits your website but doesn't sign up for a demo. This helps build trust between you and the prospect so that when they are ready to buy from your company instead of from one of its competitors who offers similar services but lacks content marketing capabilities as sophisticated as yours do (or simply haven't implemented them yet), they'll choose yours over theirs.
One way is through long-term lead nurturing strategies that keep prospects interested in the product, even if they aren’t ready to buy yet. By consistently providing valuable content through emails, webinars and social media campaigns, marketers can establish an ongoing relationship with prospects until they are ready to purchase from the company.
One way is through long-term lead nurturing strategies that keep prospects interested in the product, even if they aren’t ready to buy yet. By consistently providing valuable content through emails, webinars and social media campaigns, marketers can establish an ongoing relationship with prospects until they are ready to purchase from the company.
Marketers should also make sure that their sales team has a clear view of how marketing is driving leads into their funnel. This can be done by creating simple tracking mechanisms like "sales qualification score" or "lead conversion rate" reports so that each department knows what stage each lead passed through before closing a deal.
This integration between marketing and sales will help you create more effective OKRs for your team because both departments will know exactly how to measure success in order to remain aligned on what needs improvement moving forward
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a way to prioritize leads. It helps you focus on the leads that are most likely to convert, as well as understand which leads are most likely to buy, so you can target them with the right messaging.
Lead scoring is an analytics-based system that rates potential customers based on their likelihood of becoming a customer or customer referral.
Lead score = [lead score] * [score] + [weighted score]
Lead Score = (1) lead rating (2) weighted by revenue value of each action
For example: If a lead has made only 1 call in the past year but had a high sales rep rating, then this would result in a low overall Lead Score because while they may have called many times they did not actually purchase anything.
Conclusion
Lead scoring is another way that marketers can support sales. Lead scoring helps sales agents prioritize their time by ranking leads based on how likely they are to become customers. This allows sales reps to focus their efforts on the most promising prospects, saving them time and energy throughout their day.
