The process – not just technology – behind an effective lead generation and management strategy have changed.

Many traditional ways of selling, trade shows, direct mail and cold calling, need to be refocused and worked into new inbound marketing techniques. Forrester Research reports that 78% of B2B buyers start their research for products online.

Customers are educating themselves via the Web, so by the time sales actually speaks to them, they think they understand your products, your solutions as well as the competition’s.

Here are 5 ways Marketing can support the modern Sales process.

Align your Sales and Marketing

From a marketing prospective your tactics must evolve. Content creation is king, and must work alongside SEO, landing pages, lead creation, and social media. All focus must revolve around making your website a go to resource with the ability to generate and nurture a prospect’s interest.

Marketing and Sales must agree when a lead is “Sales qualified” and make sure the lead is then passed to the appropriate sales person quickly.

When this time comes for the prospect to talk to sales the rep must “add” value or solve their business problem rather than simply communicating the product features.

Many companies now employ a consultative sales approach – where marketing will continue to support and nurture the lead whilst the sales person works on solving specific customer’s needs.

Content Creation – an ongoing commitment

Providing a continuous stream of relevant, targeted content to attract and nurture customers is demanding. By committing and fulfilling an editorial calendar on an ongoing basis, builds a trusted and resourceful website that will pay dividends in the future.

As your traffic increases by tweaking and optimizing your offerings you will be able to create far greater numbers of sales ready leads and at a considerably lower cost. But you must keep your ideas fresh, and post regularly in order to stay front of mind.

Buying persona’s

Understand the different buying persona’s in your marketplace. They each have different needs and reasons for buying, make sure that they are addressed specifically.

This was once the role of a good sales person but since a prospect’s first impression now comes from your website rather than a chat or hand shake, your marketing and website will determine whether you make it to the buyer’s short list of vendors.

Differentiate not only your offering, but address the specific needs of different buying persona’s. State the advantages of your company, and support those claims with content, relevant stories and case studies.

Integrate your Sales Team – Lead Management

You can’t wait for a prospect to pick up the phone. With 85% of sales calls going to a voicemail, sales needs marketing support to nurture and then provide “Sales ready” leads.

The lead should be passed without delay and provided with the all insight that has been gained. The Sales person will use this to add value, understand a prospects needs and provide a solution.

Prospects also need nurturing to maintain engagement with those who are not immediate buyers. Neglecting these medium and longer-term prospects will starve your pipeline and ultimately lose sales.

Closing the loop

If the results of your marketing efforts are not measured then you are “shooting blind.” If all you do is measure the number of web hits and quantity of leads created then you will never fully understand what channels are working best.

Getting real feedback on the quality of leads, the pipeline status and reason leads are lost, lets you focus on the traits of hot leads. Identifying the cost-per-lead and cost-per-opportunity will show you which channels are worth pursuing.

This can only be accomplished when leads are tracked by Source and Sales person through to an end result. This is the role of a Lead tracking tool.