April 19th, 2012 by Laura Monn Ginsburg

The Power of Sales Acceptance

Alignment and communication between marketing and sales is a crucial aspect for a company’s ultimate revenue success. The two teams need to think, act, win and lose as one. Marketing cannot believe it can walk away from sales when there are rough times, and that cuts both ways. The first piece of sales and marketing alignment is defining what truly is a lead. With this in place, marketing can set about creating demand for sales.

Just as important as sales and marketing alignment is the team requirement for sales people to ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ leads produced by marketing. This is a pivotal activity that must happen, according to industry analyst firm Sirius Decisions, within 3 to 24 hours. The proper systems and processes must be set up on the back end to properly code reasons for acceptance and rejection with a click of a mouse with the opportunity to add more commentary. Sales should want and be excited to deliver feedback. Creating this culture will help marketing deliver better qualified leads continuously, resulting in more revenue and success for all.

It is enough to start with a non-systems powered process to just get this initiative off the ground, but integrating it into where salespeople live, their CRM system and its related mobile applications is critical for long term success. Marketing and sales is now a closely knit team – neither can succeed if they walk alone.