Marketing and Business Development: Tips for Effective Lead Handover

You've reduced headcount, you're tightening your demand generation budget which means, now more than ever that your Marketing and Sales handover and collaboration is a crucial point where leads go missing, feedback doesn't land with the right people and process errors cause you to lose out on your ROI. 

Aligning marketing and business development can bring about significant changes in the way a business operates. When these two teams work in harmony, the handover and collaboration between them become seamless, and there is no chance of leads going missing or process errors causing a loss of ROI. The impact of such alignment is obvious when working with a business development team that works in isolation, and their efforts are not being tracked accurately.

Very recently I worked with a Business Development team that worked completely in the dark and on an island. As isn't uncommon, there had been abrupt and impactful changes in Sales leadership, Marketing was incredibly busy with event season and there was no way to clearly track the impact the Business Development team was making on the business. They were spending time on tasks that could and should have been automated, and systems were either not integrated or not set up correctly for them to do their jobs.

By streamlining the process and ensuring all systems and integrations were working correctly, we were able to improve the team's productivity significantly. It is vital for businesses to understand that the success of their sales team relies heavily on how well marketing and business development work together. Therefore, it is crucial to have a watertight process between these teams, with regular feedback loops and relevant reporting to ensure that the company is moving in the right direction.

While your Sales Development team might have a better setup than the one I'm describing above, are you sure there is a watertight process between Marketing, Business Development, and your Account Executive team? 

Are you certain there are no assumptions in this key process?

Do you trust that all systems and integrations are up and running without sync errors?

Can you rely on everyone involved to understand the process that has been put in place and that it still works?

Do you know there is a healthy feedback loop between teams that focus on improvement and useful feedback?

Does your leadership team look at reporting that is relevant and links Marketing spend with either closed won revenue (or in the case of a long sales cycle accurately forecasted pipeline)?

If you feel a slight discomfort in the pit of your stomach (yes, I'm bringing the drama here because it's important!) or you simply cannot answer these questions with full confidence, it's time to sit down with these teams and make sure there is someone responsible for these processes and systems. 

1. Make sure your automation is working, you have workflows running that take care of the following:

   1. Routing to the correct rep in your team based on segment, timezone, or any other criteria that are relevant to your business.
   2. Automatic follow-up with contact information of the assigned rep to your leads.
   3. Notifications to your reps in a way that works for them. Ask them if they prefer Slack, email or a to-do in your CRM system
   4. Include information in this notification that allows the rep to prioritize the most important leads
   5. Admin and segmentation. Make sure to either disqualify or discourage leads that look unqualified. 
   6. Set a lifecycle stage and timestamp, set preferred language, and country based on the phone number, give the lead a score based on past behavior, or apply ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) scoring.
   7. UTM tracking in order to support your attribution reporting.
   8. Those are the basics, what else is relevant for your organization?
   9. Tooling to track their leads and accounts.
   10. Tooling to send emails and track them easily in the CRM without manual admin.
   11. Training on how to use the tools in their arsenal.
   12. Templates to speed up their outreach and follow up
   13. Information and lists on target accounts as well as insight on the previous engagement of their lead with your company.

       Make sure your Business Development team has access to the following: 

2. Ensure that all the lead information is accurate and up-to-date, including contact details, company information, and lead source. You want your team to be able to rely on the data and setup of your CRM.

   1. 1. Do your best to lock down lead and company creation processes in order to avoid duplicates and missing information
      2. Make sure to regularly prioritize a data health check, can you trust the data in your CRM
      3. Make sure your integrations are working if you use different systems such as HubSpot marketing and Salesforce as your CRM.
      4. Are all fields correct and on the right objects? Does the Sales Operations team assume Business Development only works with 'leads' in Salesforce which means they struggle with follow-up for existing contacts?
3. Provide the business development team with a clear understanding of the marketing campaigns and tactics that have been used to engage the lead so far.
   
   1. Make sure they know which campaigns are running and provide them with collateral they can use in their follow-up. 
   2. Make sure they are aware of big events and when those leads will land on their desk so they can follow up timely.
   3. Ensure that there is a centralized location where the Business Development team can easily access and track which campaigns their leads have engaged with in the past, allowing for a more personalized and effective approach in their follow-up.
4. Establish a process for tracking and reporting on the progress of each lead through the sales funnel.
   1. Agree on lifecycle stages, what is a lead, what is an MQL and what do you need in terms of qualification before you create an opportunity.
   2. Create a lead status dropdown that works for the entire organization.
   3. Define your unqualified or 'not ready' reasons both for reporting but also to route leads when they convert again at a later stage
   4. Build reporting where teams work. If you have one team working in HubSpot and one team working in Salesforce, make sure reporting lives where they do their work if you want them to use it on a daily basis.
   5. Schedule a feedback session between Marketing and Business Development after a big campaign and make sure learnings are implemented on both sides.
5.  Continuously communicate and collaborate with the business development team to refine and optimize the lead handover process.
   
   1. Be available to troubleshoot when it matters: When your reps struggle to follow up with an important lead or when they are flooded with lists after an event
   2. Communicate with Marketing when important data points are missing and explain why you need them to follow up. 
   3. Follow the leads from their initial conversion to either closed won or closed lost to understand where your funnel is leaky.

In today's challenging business environment, effective collaboration between Marketing and Business Development teams is essential for success. By streamlining processes, ensuring systems are integrated and optimized, and providing training and support to your teams, you can improve productivity, increase ROI, and drive growth. So if you're feeling uncertain about your current systems and processes, take the time to sit down with your teams and make sure everything is working as it should. With the right approach, you can create a watertight lead handover process that ensures your company is moving in the right direction. 

Need a hand? I'm happy to help you take a critical look at your lead handover process. Book a time on my calendar here: