About this episode
Marketers tend to focus on bringing in leads at the top of funnel, instead of converting the leads that are already in the pipeline. Have you ever thought that this might actually be destroying value in your funnel?
After working with many different B2B companies, we've cracked a step by step guide on how you can ensure you're delivering value with the leads you bring into the funnel through a simple Sales Service Level Agreement (SLA) process.
SLA, what?
3 out of 4 B2B companies do not have a strict SLA process in place that Sales agree with and follow.
This means marketers are not maximizing the conversion potential of the leads that they are bringing into the funnel.
But first: what is an SLA? A Sales SLA is an agreement between marketing & sales whereby Marketing commits to generate N Qualified Leads per quarter, and Sales commits to reach out to 99% of those leads within H hours.
A simple 3-step guide to establish Sales SLAs
Instead of creating complicated processes that will be tough to put in place and have pushback from your Sales team, focus on simplicity by following this gradual, 3-step process:
- Track touch rate of MQLs sent to the Sales team
- Measure how many qualified leads have been touched by Sales within 2 hours
- Measure time to first touch for qualified vs unqualified leads
SLA = tool to collaborate more effectively with Sales
At the end of the day, Marketing Ops wants to send quality leads to Sales and Sales wants to close deals. To do that, you would need to establish a simple communication tool like an SLA so that you can start to:
✅ Understand how to shift Sales resources from the unqualified to qualified leads
✅ Identify gaps in Sales training
