Blog, Marketing Operations, Sales / SDR

Accurate Data Helps Marketing & Sales Feel the Love

It’s the old story: Sales accuses Marketing of sending them “bad” leads, or not generating enough good ones. Marketing accuses Sales of not following up on leads they’ve generated, or not following up quickly enough. What can bring Marketing and Sales together so they can work more effectively as a revenue generating team? Good data.

The relationship between Marketing and Sales can be contentious. It starts and ends with accurate data.

It’s an old story: Sales accuses Marketing of sending them “bad” leads, or not generating enough good ones, while Marketing accuses Sales of not following up on leads they’ve generated, or not following up quickly enough.

So what’s behind this tension and what can be done to help Marketing and Sales rekindle their love so they can work together more effectively as a revenue-generating team?

Eliminating bad leads

Let’s start with what salespeople mean when they say a lead is “bad”. Often, sales can’t see the value in the leads marketing generates because they’re not immediately actionable. When leads are missing key contact details, such as direct-dial phones, or the data provided is incorrect, salespeople end up wasting time on manual research and/or reaching out to people who aren’t qualified. And if there’s one thing good salespeople hate, it’s wasting time.

Sarah Strid, Senior Manager of Demand Generation at FloQast, understands these issues all too well. As noted in a recently published case study, FloQast was generating a high volume of leads through numerous marketing programs, such as events, webinars, and third-party partnerships. But unfortunately, a lot of contact and account data being generated was incomplete and oftentimes, inaccurate.

“If there’s ever a bad list or contact data is inaccurate it bounces—that’s huge from a systems and programmatic aspect—but it’s also really detrimental to the relationship between our Sales and Marketing teams because they’re not going trust that what Marketing is providing to them is really high value,” says Sarah.

She continued: “Pre-event lists and leads collected at conferences were always a challenge because the data is often incomplete or incorrect, resulting in a lot of time wasted trying to manually enrich data instead of reaching out to prospects or following up on leads.”

FloQast was able to overcome its “bad lead” issue with on-demand lead enrichment. They’ve re-verified and updated their CRM data and enriched contact data to drive better campaign results and provide more value to the Sales team.

“With complete, accurate data, we’ve been able to do more pre-event outreach, such as booking demos prior to a conference—something that we historically had greater difficulty doing. We’ve also been able to run more targeted programs,” says Sarah.

“We’re running several campaigns and if we’re generating X amount of contacts and none of them are accurate, it doesn’t matter. Marketing isn’t driving value to Sales or to the company as a whole,” she concluded.

Accurate Data - Fuel for Marketing and Sales

Teams that create target personas together, stay together

Another way to align Marketing and Sales, and avoid bad leads (and the bad feelings that go with them), is to have your teams work hand-in-hand to develop detailed target personas, as well as ideal customer profiles (ICP) and lead qualification criteria. This prevents future misunderstandings and you can work together more effectively to target your total audience and drive conversions.

With agreement on your target personas and ICP, you can measure your total audience (TAM), evaluate the coverage in your CRM and marketing automation platform, and perform contact discovery to fill any gaps with complete, accurate data. We’ve performed thousands of TAM analyses and people are always surprised to see how many target contacts they’re actually missing—we find the average TAM coverage is only 17%!

An ABM love story

Jeremy Middleton, Senior Director of Rev Operations & Digital Marketing at Pramata knows about getting Marketing and Sales aligned to reach their total audience.

As detailed in this ABM case study, Pramata wanted to complement their inbound and events programs with an ABM and account-based sales approach but lacked complete and accurate data for the contacts in their target accounts, so they were wasting a lot of active selling time on research and dead ends.

Jeremy worked with the business development reps to align their teams and re-focus on their very largest target accounts, further refine their target personas, and enrich their CRM data, increasing TAM coverage from 30% to 99%. The teams also worked together to create detailed account engagement plans with personalized content and customized messaging.

“Now that we’re enriching our SFDC deployment with fresh accurate data, we can confidently take a highly-personalized approach to ABM—and it’s having a positive impact at every level. Our email open rates have doubled, click rates have quadrupled, and we’re seeing a 4x lift in sales conversions,” says Jeremy.

“Our Sales team is more efficient—we have significantly reduced time spent searching for direct phone numbers and spend less time chasing untargeted prospects. We now have valuable ammunition to personalize our outreach to our target market and personas to engage them more effectively. This has enabled us to move deals through the pipeline with a greater velocity and increase our conversion rates,” he continued.

Fueling customer retention with accurate data

Accurate data plays a crucial role in supporting customer retention efforts. By leveraging accurate customer data, businesses can deliver personalized experiences, provide proactive customer support, and foster long-term loyalty.

With accurate data, marketing, and sales teams can understand their customer’s preferences, purchase history, and interactions, allowing them to create personalized experiences tailored to each customer’s needs and interests. By delivering relevant and targeted offers, recommendations, and communications, they can strengthen the relationship with customers and increase their likelihood of remaining loyal.

Furthermore, accurate data helps identify potential issues or concerns that customers may encounter. By analyzing customer data, businesses can proactively address any problems, provide timely assistance, and offer solutions before customers even realize they need help. This proactive approach to customer support demonstrates care and responsiveness, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Accurate data is essential for implementing loyalty programs and rewards initiatives. By tracking customer transactions, preferences, and engagement, businesses can accurately identify loyal customers and offer them targeted rewards, discounts, or exclusive benefits. These personalized loyalty programs enhance customer retention by incentivizing repeat purchases and fostering a sense of value and appreciation.

Accurate data is the gift that keeps on giving

Take a lesson from Sarah and Jeremy. Forget chocolates and flowers and give your Sales team what they really want: complete, accurate data for all the contacts in your target accounts.

Imagine their happy faces as they open your CRM to find verified direct dials, up-to-date titles, account profiles, and accurate emails for all the contacts that fit the target personas that you created together—your total audience, perfected. They’ll love being able to hit the phones without wasting time on research and you’ll love having the complete, accurate data you need for more targeted, personalized campaigns. A match made in demand gen heaven.

DealSignal

DealSignal provides fresh, accurate, verified B2B data that helps sales & marketing teams maximize their efficiency and performance and drive more revenue.

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