How to
Shorten
Your
Sales
Cycle
overgostudio.com
n
888-405-7515
T
he days of salesmen as the keepers of
sales environment, your job as a business
knowledge are over. Thanks to the power of
owner is to make sure that this information is
the internet, buyers are more informed than
reaching the decision makers at the right time,
ever. Increasingly, buyers seek out knowledge
in the right format, on the right platforms. That’s
before they buy. 61% of global Internet users
where an automated sales funnel comes into play.
1
research products online . They look to blogs,
forums, and social media to make an
Every business owner wants their business to
informed decision about a product
grow, and the key to growth is a steady
or service before parting with their
influx of qualified sales leads. A qualified
Stop
wasting
hard-earned dollars. The average sales
sales lead is someone who is salesyour
sales
team’s
cycle has increased 22% over the
ready, or prepared to purchase your
time and your
past 5 years, thanks to the
product or service. The problem arises
increased knowledge buyers now
when your sales team is essentially
business dollars
2
possess . Now, companies are genwasting its time (and your business
following
up
erating leads by attracting visitors
dollars) following up with leads that are
with
unqualified
with content. But the burden has fallunqualified, or otherwise unready to purleads!
en on sales teams everywhere to deterchase. Gleanster Research shows that 50%
mine if a lead is a potential buyer. Sales
of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy,
teams must ask, “Is this lead just looking for
and only 25% of all leads are legitimate and should
information?” “Is this person a decision maker in
advance to sales3. Fortunately, there are processes
his or her household or business?” Because of the
and methodologies that can help reduce the time
increased visibility that content marketing provides,
your sales team spends with unqualified prospects
it’s becoming increasingly difficult to determine
in the beginning of your sales cycle, thus reducing
which leads are decision makers. In the digital
the total length of your sales cycle.
1 Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012. 2 Sirius Decisions. 3 Gleanster Research
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| 2
Sales Funnel
Visitors Enter
So how do you start?
First, create a sales funnel for your website and map custom
content to it. Sales funnels allow you to direct prospects
through an automated sales process as they interact with
your website. The key to a sales funnel are the stages of
content your prospects come into contact with throughout.
As leads move down through your sales funnel, they will be
encouraged to engage with each piece of content. This flow
of events acts as part of the sales process, because leads
qualify themselves by showing interest in your content.
Standard sales funnels contain top of the funnel offers,
middle of the funnel offers and bottom of the funnel offers
for prospects to engage with.
Setting up your sales funnel with this sequence of offers is
important. However some leads won’t progress through the
funnel in this orderly fashion. Leads can enter the funnel
at any stage. You should view your funnel as more of a
content strategy; people will come to your site for three
reasons: awareness, research or intent. Awareness is
when the buyer is aware of a need for your product or
service. Research is when the buyer engages in seeking
information about your product or service. And intent is when
they find the right option for a product or service and begin
the decision making process. It’s very possible that a lead has
come to your site from a competitor’s and is already aware
and informed. Your funnel needs to be set up to provide information for each stage. Here is an example of a sales funnel.
Blogging
Content
Information
Qualified Leads
This top section of
the funnel establishes
you as a thought leader
in your industry.
Marketing
Qualified Leads
During the middle section
you provide leads with
specific product and
service information
Sales
Qualified Leads
Sales Ready Lead
Produced
Automated Lead
Nurturing Email
Campaign
Content
Automated Lead
Nurturing
Email
Campaign
Consultation
Offer
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Blogging
B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67%
more leads per month than those who do not4.
You should have a blog on your website that
speaks about your audience’s pain points,
interests and questions. Your prospects enter
their queries into search engines, like Google,
and your blog articles with the answers to those
queries appear in the search results. This is how
you direct traffic to your website. Attracting visits
with your blog is the first step. Once they are on
your site, you’ll want to guide them to continued
engagement on your website by presenting them
with an opportunity to download a top of the
funnel advanced content offer.
LEAD CAPTURE
ATTRACT
The Sales Funnel Break Down
Top of the funnel advanced content
Advanced content offers something of value to
your audience. This value comes in the form of
new ideas, educational material, or solutions to
problems. Ideally, advanced content pieces are
valuable enough that visitors are willing to fill
out a form with their contact information in order
to gain access to it. Common forms advanced
content may take are webinars, whitepapers
and ebooks. Top of the funnel advanced content
illustrates your industry expertise and addresses
common pain points your prospects experience.
61% of consumers say they feel better about,
and are more likely to buy from, a company that
delivers custom content5. When a prospect signs
up to access top of the funnel advanced content
they officially become a lead. These leads are
‘information qualified’ leads because at this
stage in the sales funnel they are only seeking
educational material about your industry.
4 FactBrowser. 5 Custom Content Council.
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LEAD CAPTURE
LEAD CAPTURE
Prospects in the middle of
the funnel have recognized
they have a need for your
service and are ready to
search for specific solutions.
Bottom of the funnel consult offer
The bottom of the sales funnel offer is a free
consultation or some sort of direct business
offer. Prospects and Leads at this stage are
ready to talk to a member of your sales team.
Once your sales funnel is set up on your website you are well on your way to shortening your
sales cycle. The next step is to put processes in
place that automate your sales funnel, so at the
end of the day your sales team receives only
the most qualified leads from your website.
Middle of the funnel advanced content
78% of consumers believe that organizations
providing custom content are interested in
building good relationships6. It’s key to place
custom content at certain stages of your sales
funnel. Middle of the funnel advanced content
pieces should be centered on your products or
services, rather than industry related content.
When leads travel down your sales funnel or
arrive at your site already educated and convert
on middle of the funnel advanced content they
become a marketing qualified lead. Marketing
qualified leads have raised a virtual hand and
expressed interest in the products or services
you provide.
6 TMG Custom Media.
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Automating Your Sales Funnel
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is an automated email process with
the goal of moving leads through the various stages
of content in your sales funnel. According to The
Annuitas Group, businesses that use marketing
automation to nurture prospects experience a
451% increase in qualified leads7.
Lead nurturing campaigns should focus on building
a relationship with your leads depending on where
they find themselves in your sales funnel.
Top of the funnel lead nurturing campaigns should
speak to information qualified leads that have only
shown an interest in your top of the funnel content.
These leads are not ready to buy; they are just
looking for industry related information. Your lead
nurturing campaigns in this scenario should provide
them with more educational industry information
that helps answer questions and provides solutions
to their problems. And of course you should position
your business as the solution to their pain points
by offering them access to a middle of the funnel
piece of advanced content.
Make marketing human and
build rapport with leads through
nurturing campaigns
Middle of the funnel lead nurturing campaigns
address common objectives you receive during your
sales calls. Leads found in the middle of your sales
funnel are considered marketing qualified leads and
they are concerned with how your business can
best serve them. The campaign should combat these
doubts and concerns by proactively addressing
common objections. This serves to funnel the leads
down to the free consultation stage. Nurtured
leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in
sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads8.
Lead nurturing helps your company stay top of mind
through the lead’s decision making process this
makes you more likely to be the company they go
back and look at in depth when they are ready to
make a decision. Nurtured leads also make 47%
larger purchases than non-nurtured leads9. Now
that’s a business process we can definitely all
get behind.
7 The Annuitas Group. 8 DemandGen Report. 9 The Annuitas Group.
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Lead Segmentation
Lead nurturing is a great process to move leads
down your sales funnel, but leads can get stuck at
certain stages. That’s where segmentation comes
into play. By segmenting your leads into contact
lists, you can automate emails and send your leads
the information they’re looking for at exactly the
time they’re looking for it. Relevant emails drive
18 times more revenue than broadcast emails10.
You can segment your leads into lists based on
where they are in the sales funnel. Let’s say a group
of leads downloaded an offer on how to sharpen
knives, but then took no further action into other
areas of your website. If you segment this group of
leads into a contact list, you can send them more
information on what they originally found interesting:
sharpening knives. These kinds of targeted marketing
efforts will be the nudge leads stuck at various
stages need in order to continue down your sales
funnel. According to the Lyris Annual Email Optimizer
Report, 39% of marketers who segmented their
email lists experienced higher open rates, 28%
experienced lower unsubscribe rates, and 24%
experienced better deliverability and greater
revenue11. Segmenting leads will allow you to send
out personal, relevant emails, which will take the
place of your sales team spending their time trying
to follow up with the leads in their unqualified state.
1
1
2
If you’re anything like me, Kel
ly, you’ve probably been struggl
ing with
this thing called social media (
and how to apply it in your bus
iness.)
By apply it, I mean, how to use
it effectively to grow your sales
without
taking up more of your time.
In my efforts to reconcile my
own personal struggle – betwe
en social
media being a valuable tool and
social media being a waste of
time –
I’ve stumbled upon a way to use
it that is enormously valuable
for B2B
sales, and requires little effort.
This week, I’m going to show
what I’ve been doing, and how
you can
apply this in your business.
To make it even easier I’ve cre
ated two different ways for you
to absorb
this information. You can read
about it by clicking (read it) or
you can
watch the video by clicking (wa
tch it).
I would love to hear your feedba
See you next week.
3
3
ck – so please feel free to res
pond.
Rick Kranz
1 Email Personalization
2 Targeted for Interest– Leads receiving this email
previously showed engagement with social media
content on our website
3 No Fancy Gimmicks– An email stripped of html
with direct links to access relevant content of interest
to the leads
10 Jupiter Research. 11 Lyris Annual Email Optimizer Report.
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| 7
Lead Grading
According to MarketingSherpa, 61% of marketers
send all leads directly to sales, however only 27%
of those leads will be qualified12. That means
sales wastes its time trying to qualify the other
73% of your leads instead of generating new
business for your company. Lead grading stops
this from happening. Lead grading is an internal
process that will allow your sales team to know the
exact position of a lead in the sales funnel and their
level of qualification as a potential buyer. The criteria
you use to determine what qualifies a lead as ready
to buy will be unique to your business. Assign a
score to any action a lead takes when engaging
with your marketing efforts. Whether it be on your
social media, your newsletter emails, or on your
website. You want to set your grading system up
by looking at how your current customers behaved
with your marketing efforts when they were leads.
For example, if most of your customers opened a
specific email or downloaded a specific piece of
advanced content, those actions would be taken into
consideration when you set up your lead grading.
Once the actions that define how a potential
buyer behaves with your marketing efforts are
established, you create a scoring system. Simply
assign a point value to actions leads can take.
Once leads reach the threshold determined by
your grading system, you can notify your sales team
that the leads are informed, ready for a decision,
and qualified for a sales conversation. With lead
grading in place your sales team is only speaking
to prospects that have had meaningful engagement with your sales funnel. The result is quality
sales calls with qualified buyers.
Hypothetical Lead Grading Examples: Actions Leads Took, Their Funnel Position & Their Score
Lead A
Lead Grade: 22
Funnel Position: Top of the Funnel
Opened June Newsletter– 2pts
Downloaded Marketing
Webinar Offer– 20pts
Lead B
Lead Grade: 10
Funnel Position: Top of the Funnel
Subscribed to Blog– 10pts
Lead C
Lead Grade: 55
Funnel Position: Middle of the Funnel
Marketing Qualified Lead
Opened Lead Nurturing Emails– 5pts
Downloaded Case Study Offer– 30pts
Downloaded Marketing
Webinar Offer– 20pts
12 MarketingSherpa.
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| 8
How to Do Lead Grading
Conduct an audit of all your marketing efforts,
advanced content blog posts, emails, website pages,
forms and so on. Then, assign points to these
actions. The points you assign are arbitrary and
you should choose what suits you best. To setup
lead grading in its simplest form take the following
steps: Make top of the funnel engagements (e.g.
blog posts, newsletters, top of the funnel pieces of
advanced content) weighted lightly. Have middle of
the funnel engagements (e.g. brochure downloads,
lead nurturing emails, social media activity) weighted
a bit more, and bottom of the funnel engagements
(e.g. contact form, free consultation requests,
demos, etc.) weighted heavily. Of course lead
grading can be a lot more complex.
Example of content audit
Name of Content Type of Content
How to Reduce
Marketing Costs
whitepaper
Repeatable
Business
Processes to Grow
Leads and Sales
Webinar
webinar
Social Media Made
Simple
webinar
Social Media
Assessment
assessment / test
Topic Covered
How implementing
inbound marketing
reduces overall
marketing costs.
Inbound marketing
processes are
highlighted as
business
processes that
solve leads and
sales painpoints
Why CEOs should
be active on social
media, and the
benefits of it. Use
a Social CRM such
a Nimble
Grade Google+,
LinkedIn,
Facebook, Twitter
and/or Pinterest.
Give advice on
actions taken.
Example: There is prospect A and prospect B.
If prospect A fills out your bottom of the funnel
consultation offer but has had ZERO engagement
with your marketing efforts prior, this does not
necessarily mean he is a qualified buyer.
Compare them to prospect B, who has downloaded
multiple pieces of advanced content and read all of
your emails.
See the difference between the two?
Prospect B’s point total should reflect the
higher level of activity on your site.
Buyer Persona
Business Owner
Business Owner
Date Created
Pain Point Addressed
9/23/2013 marketing budgets
7/15/2013 lack of leads, lack of sales
Funnel Position
Top
http://marketing.
overgovideo.
com/how-toreduce-marketingcosts
Top
http://marketing.
overgovideo.
com/businessprocesses-forsales-growthwebinar
Business Owner
don't understand how to use
7/29/2013 social for B2B
Top
Business Owner
5/21/2013 social media not performing Middle
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Link
http://marketing.
overgovideo.
com/social-mediafor-businessowners
http://marketing.
overgovideo.
com/social-mediafor-businessownersassessment
| 9
How To Do It All?
Now that you know how to shorten your sales cycle,
you’re probably wondering how to implement all of
this. A content marketing platform such as HubSpot
allows you to automate your sales process with
simple, easy to use tools. In addition, HubSpot’s
Content Optimization System (COS) allows you
to host a blog and site pages that offer custom
content to leads in each stage of the sales funnel.
According to Forrester Research, companies that
excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales
ready leads at 33% lower costs13. With Hubspot,
it’s easy to excel at lead nurturing. HubSpot allows
you to set up customized email campaigns that
are triggered automatically. You can build multiple
emails, organize them into what HubSpot calls a
“Workflow” and then trigger the workflow of lead
nurturing emails to send once a prospect takes
a certain action on your website, like downloading
a specific whitepaper.
HubSpot also has tools for segmenting your leads
and contacts. When a visitor converts to a lead on
your website, HubSpot tracks every engagement
they have with your marketing efforts from that
moment on. With the segmenting tool you can
build segmented lists that populate criteria leads
have or have not met.
Lead grading is also made simple with HubSpot.
The lead grading tool allows you to assign any
score (positive or negative) to any action a lead
takes on your site. With HubSpot, you can build a
lead grading process much faster than if you were
to do it manually. You can even send your sales
team automated email alerts when leads reach a
qualified score – right out of HubSpot. Could it be
any easier? The answer is yes! HubSpot also
integrates with CRM systems so sales team can
see what stage each lead is at and what type of
content they have consumed without having to
leave the CRM system. Your sales team not only
stops wasting their time qualifying leads, but
now has a log of all the ways qualified leads
have interacted with your company’s marketing
efforts. Knowledge like this is a powerful tool on
sales calls.
13 Forrester Research.
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| 10
Takeaway
With an automated sales funnel, you can generate
more qualified sales leads at a lower cost, and close
more sales. All the while reducing the time your
sales team is spending with unqualified leads. Now
that you know how to setup a sales funnel, nurture
leads through your sales funnel, segment your leads
and setup up a lead grading system, there is no
excuse for sales wasting time with unqualified leads.
Author Bios
Laura Hogan is an account
manager for OverGo Studio
and self proclaimed OverGo
Cheerleader. She executes
marketing strategies that
grow leads and sales for her clients. You
can follow her and her pitbull, Piglet on
Twitter @lalalaurahogan.
Kelly Kranz is a content manager
for OverGo Studio. She manages
the creation of content across
multiple platforms-from blog
articles to ebooks to infographics.
When she isn’t buried in content she’s watching
Arrested Development or Battlestar Galactica.
Follow her on Twitter @kellykranz.
About OverGo
OverGo Studio is a full inbound marketing agency
dedicated to being your inbound marketing team.
We work closely with you to attract traffic to your
website and use your website to capture leads.
We track, nurture and grade your leads to make
sure your sales team is calling qualified business
prospects. Reach out for a free consultation today
and we can discuss how our inbound marketing
team can help shorten your sales cycle and grow
your business.
Click Here to
Request a Free
Inbound Marketing
Consultation
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