Pipeline management: guiding the right leads along the best path

It’s an understatement to say that pipeline management is a challenge for marketers and sales executives today. Competition is rife, new markets are emerging, and consumer expectations remain dynamic. Generating, nurturing, and qualifying leads has never been without its difficulties, but these processes are now more multifaceted and nuanced than ever before.

Consider the fact that according to McKinsey, B2B customers engaged with 10 different channels during the decision-making process in 2021 – double the number of channels used in 2016. This means there are plenty of opportunities to gather marketing data, but what about sales intelligence? Do you need to meet a prospect at multiple touchpoints, or could you take them along a more efficient journey? Is your current approach equipping your account executives with the intel needed to truly personalise the first sales call?

Before you can give the most relevant prospects the best possible journey, you need to really know them. You need to understand everything from their day-to-day responsibilities to their specific pain points, and whether they have an appetite for your value proposition.

How do you achieve this to deliver a tailored journey? That’s exactly what we explore here.

Optimising the route from lead-to-client status

Marketers face a great deal of pressure in every aspect of their role, from nurturing the lead to handing them over to the sales team. Even with a meticulously analysed, tried-and-tested funnel, determining the best course of action for every lead is a challenge.

The pressure is also on for account executives. Once marketing has handed over a prospect, they need to jump into action quickly to gather the most relevant and specific sales intelligence. They may begin with marketing intel, but knowing how and when to take an individual from MQL to SQL status requires more than raw data.

With a disconnect between the two teams, the burning question remains: how do you know if you’re taking a lead on the route they want to be on? Here are three pointers to help you evaluate your current process.

Are your B2B buyers ‘omnichannelled’ out?

As the data from McKinsey suggests, today’s B2B consumers are even more comfortable using multiple channels to gather insights and inform their purchasing decisions. This makes sense; we all saw how Covid-19 lockdowns forced people to become digitally savvy and rely on remote interactions. The B2B landscape shifted considerably during this time, with many decision-makers engaging with marketing messaging and sales calls without the face-to-face support of their colleagues.

With new-found confidence in digital spheres, some leads will prefer to engage with you across multiple touchpoints. The option to consume self-service content, like thought leadership eBooks or product demonstration videos, will be invaluable for many. However, multi-step and multi-channel journeys might leave others feeling disconnected – like they’re stop-starting through country lanes when they want to hit the open road.

To avoid overwhelming your leads with too many channels and engagements, it’s important to align your sales and marketing objectives. When these teams operate hand in hand, the results can be incredible. In fact, according to LinkedIn’s ‘The Power Couple’, more than 50% of the marketers and salespeople surveyed linked better collaboration to better financial performance.

This isn’t surprising, given that a disconnect between the two teams can hold marketing back from qualifying leads accurately and stop sales from getting to know them at the deepest level. A fractured pipeline could end in lost revenue, whether it’s by shedding leads through inconsistent value proposition messaging or missing out on sales opportunities by not preparing thoroughly.

However, when you introduce a solution that bridges the intelligence gap between sales and marketing – such as a very precise lead qualification process – the journey from MQL to SQL to client becomes much smoother. After all, you can make sure every interaction delivers value when you completely tailor the journey to a prospect, right up until the moment your account executives host the first sales call.

Is your pipeline personalised enough?

When it comes to avoiding omnichannel overwhelm, another challenge is to identify which touchpoints are truly relevant to each lead. Each business has its own way of doing this, but don’t forget that your CRM could be overflowing with raw marketing data. This isn’t enough to move forward with, but it can provide a jumping-off point. The next stage is to gather sales intelligence to understand your lead’s needs, pain points, and appetite for your value proposition.

You should also determine which interactions, content types, and channels make them tick. For some leads, a personalised website or email marketing experience will guide their decision-making. For others, it’s a phone call that allows them to articulate their very specific pain points and desires. For the latter, too many channels and touchpoints may simply complicate the process.

Therefore, part of personalising the journey is knowing when to take a lead down the marketing pipeline and when to direct them straight to a sales discussion. It’s not about reinventing lead nurturing, but simply optimising the process. Again, it’s here that you need to invest in gathering targeted intelligence. You need to know each prospect so well that you can make the healthiest pipeline management decisions (and make sure they’re on the journey they want to be on).

Are your competitors on the prowl?

Another consideration to make as you drive qualified leads along the sales pipeline is whether it’s your business’s front door they’re heading for. With consumers absorbing a steady stream of marketing messages every day from both traditional and digital channels, it’s difficult to cut through the noise. The challenge is to guide the right people towards the right destination with the right content, without warming them up to interact with other providers.

Imagine the following scenario. Through your outbound marketing efforts, you’ve connected with the operations manager of a manufacturing enterprise. Over the next few months, you target them with self-service content, such as white papers, covering the pitfalls of inefficient manufacturing. They now have a clear idea of their pain points and the potential solutions but haven’t yet spoken to an account executive. One of your competitors, on the other hand, reaches out to qualify them and then sets them up with a sales discussion right away.

Are you experiencing similar scenarios? Could your prospects be zoning out your marketing efforts? There’s every chance of this if they’re being bombarded with similar messaging from multiple brands and you haven’t yet made them feel seen, heard, and important. By going beyond marketing intelligence to truly get to know their pain points and desires, and following up with a sales discussion that hits each one, you could reduce the risk of this happening.

Elevating your pipeline management with Pure Business Development

At Pure Business Development, we’re not here to reinvent your marketing wheel. We’re here to blow the tyres up, fit new rubber, and attach them to a turbo-charged, highly targeted missile that gets straight to the heart of every issue. Acting as an extension or augmentation of your sales and marketing infrastructure, we can connect your sales executives to relevant, high-value prospects across multiple sectors and verticals.

By outsourcing your lead generation and qualification efforts to our nimble team, you can drive straight towards thoroughly assessed sales opportunities. As such, you can be confident that you’re nurturing decision-makers who align with your value proposition. You can also layer your marketing data with our laser-sharp sales intelligence, so that your executives can hold truly meaningful conversations every time.

To find out how we can help you guide the right leads along the best path, book an introductory call today.