A well-oiled sales and marketing machine powers an organization. In order to survive, sales drives revenue. In order for sales to drive revenue, marketing must keep high quality opportunities flowing into the sales pipeline.

For this machine to run, both teams must be aligned. Here are three simple steps to get you there. 

1. Sales and marketing work together to define the Marketing Qualified Lead

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead that is more likely to have a successful journey down the sales pipeline and convert to a customer.

Define your MQL using objective facts and data. To start, ask these questions:

• What is the profile of the ideal lead that is usually brought in by the marketing team?
• Where are these leads coming from? Did your lead arrive through an email list? Through the website?
• What is their usage pattern? Did they download a white paper? Submit contact information?
• What is the perfect job title/decision level of a typical buyer? In which market segment?

Based on these requirements, the marketing team will be able to focus on the right channels to attract leads.

Getting this MQL right is the first step of the process. But how do we use this information?

2. Create a data driven roadmap from marketing to sales

Here is an example of the ideal sales roadmap with Salesforce. This roadmap will give you the path of all visitors and potential leads, and includes each stage in a lead's interaction with you.
Putting structure around this funnel will greatly optimize this flow, and save you time in the long term.

Photo Courtesy of: Bayberry Consulting

To inform milestones on your roadmap, synchronize your Salesforce CRM data with your marketing automation system. There are a number of Salesforce integration options available. Non-technical users who want to plug their software right into Salesforce can look to the App Exchange for plugin options.

Integrating sales and marketing data provides powerful insights. Information like number of website visits, returning visitors, and email engagement can bring leads along the funnel that you have defined. Select the leads that are the perfect pick for your sales team versus the ones that need to be nurtured longer.

Now it's time to learn how to be better than anyone at the lead definition game, and refine opportunities even further.

3. Innovate! Find Insights about your leads, engage at the right time, and close faster.

Can you guess what the impact of your sales relaunch would be if you engaged with your lead the instant they had the problem you are solving? According to InsideSales.com, 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first!

Analytics tools like those on AppExchange can provide additional reporting inside Salesforce, there is a host of data not being captured that could be used by sales and marketing to paint a picture around the value of each lead:

• Can you learn from your email marketing recipients? Use reading behaviors to tell you when to engage with a lead, and qualify his real interest. What does it mean if a “dead lead” reopens an email shared months ago?

• How much time does a lead spend reviewing your offer? If someone spends only one minute reviewing a 12 page proposal, he is likely not interested. Why not prioritize your time by focusing on only interested readers (thus motivated leads)?

• Who is actively listening to your demo? Online meetings are a goldmine of unused data. Once on a call, you’ll want to see who is being active in the meeting room. Make sure to know who is really interested, and who might be your company champion.

• Can you build up a relationship with this lead? Get informed when target contacts are making important moves. A contact at your lead moving to another company? There is a high chance that they may need your services again!

Using data makes you faster. Improve the sales process starting today

Reduce wasted time by knowing when to connect to your most engaged prospects. All these “unexpected” behavioral insights are easier and easier to collect. Take advantage of them.

Sales and marketing should employ data to define a marketing qualified lead, map lead progression down to the final sale, and stay informed along the way.

Are you using any other tricks to better understand your leads, and qualify them faster?

Clement Cazalot is co-founder & CEO of docTrackr, providing document security and tracking for businesses and salespeople.