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Investment is not a sign of success. It’s a sign of faith – that we’re on the right track and that we’re doing the right thing. At GO1 we believe in the power of learning and we’re dedicated to helping organisations provide the best professional development opportunities to their teams. When you have a company like Salesforce Ventures backing you it’s a great vote of confidence in the way you’re outwardly selling your business.  

Since receiving funding, we’ve been looking at ways we can scale, expand our offerings and continue to make a difference through education. When the pandemic hit , we put a lot of resources into our free training courses around COVID-19, such as hygiene awareness. Having people experience what we offer, and experience it for free, meant that we were able to break through a few barriers and help them understand what GO1 offers. The direct benefit was doing something that made a difference and the indirect benefit was increasing our brand awareness.  

But to do something that is both impactful and has reach requires rejigging your sales, marketing and outreach muscle you have already strengthened. So, how do you build that muscle to begin with? It starts with understanding how to create a successful lead generation campaign.

There’s no sales without marketing

Here’s a fact: Leads fuel sales, sales fuel customers, customers fuel growth. If at the end of the day you don't have the leads, you don't have the sales, then there is no company. Creating a successful lead generation campaign is not just a matter of marketing walking the lead through the door and sales converting it. There’s a lot of work that goes on under the surface. And it all starts with aligning sales and marketing on their common vision – deriving a new customer to come on board.  

Think of it like this: how can you use automation to go from marketing to sales? Are you using the right technology to properly lead score and nurture leads? If marketing is able to understand more about the conversation points and generate more qualified leads, then sales is able to handle more qualified leads and your business will see the flow-on effect.  

Have we run into problems with getting the two working together – definitely! But we found once both areas realised that they can achieve more together than apart, that’s when they aligned and started to move prospects down the sales funnel. And this unification was particularly visible when it came to developing our COVID-19 training – people united and worked together with a sense of purpose.

 

Quality or quantity? Why not have both?

In this day and age, every single lead is incredibly important. You can’t afford to run an inefficient sales machine. That inefficiency could be the difference between your sales team being really successful or being mediocre. You need to make sure you’re extracting the most value out of what you’re putting at the top of your sales funnel. 

People often say you can have high quality leads but lower quantity, or high quantity leads with lower quality. With automation, lead nurturing and great qualification tools you’re able to have your cake and eat it too. That is: a larger volume of leads at a higher quality than you otherwise wouldn’t have. 

So, what makes a high quality lead? 

I think the best leads are the ones that don’t come across the line as a ‘sale’. They’re the leads that choose to stick with us, they love us and use us. Conversion is that entire customer lifetime journey where the goal is turning that lead into a brand ambassador.

Data is still king

No matter how talented your sales team is, at the end of the day data is still king. You need to make sure you're collecting the appropriate data so you can provide your customers personalised experiences that allow you to stand out and generate leads.  

Outside of my GO1 life, I’m a practising GP. And like all doctors, to understand what a patient’s problem is, I need to consider their medical history. I need to be able to measure heart rate, blood pressure – ultimately I need quantitative data to help me make decisions. It’s not that dissimilar to a salesperson.  A salesperson needs to analyse customer data and make decisions to inform how they’re going to approach a customer. Whether that’s using data to lead score or using pilot data to close a deal.

There’s never been a better time for virtual sales

The day after the COVID-19 restrictions kicked in the GO1 office was empty, yet we were still fully operational because we had the virtual tools and technology that allowed us to seamlessly transition to remote working and virtual selling. 

Four months later, selling to someone via a virtual meeting is the new normal. This makes now the perfect opportunity for Australian businesses to expand internationally, if they’re in a position to do so. You no longer have to wait to get boots on the ground – jump on a virtual call at midnight and sell into the market from here in Australia. As I like to say, make hay while the sun shines. 

 

For more essential sales insights, download the 50 Pro Sales Tips for 2020 ebook.