3 Ways SMBs Can Solve a Broken Lead Handoff Process

The primary goal for any business is to drive revenue. In today’s digital sales landscape, creating a seamless lead handoff process between marketing and sales teams is key to accomplishing this goal. However, this is often easier said than done, as leads can easily fall by the wayside or get lost in the funnel and never resurface during handoff.

Traditionally, this lead loss results from disunification between sales and marketing, unusable data, and a lack of appropriate tools—particularly for small to midsize businesses (SMBs).

Large enterprises are typically armed with robust resources and marketing capabilities to ensure leads are followed and nurtured across the entire customer journey. SMBs trying to compete in the same space don’t often have the same level of organizational support to unify the customer experience and minimize broken handoffs and recycled leads. The result? Too many lost leads.

To generate conversion and increase revenue, SMBs need to rethink their approach to the lead handoff process. There are three ways to do this while maintaining relevance in today’s digital-first era of buying and selling.

1. Unify Behind the Customer Journey

The first step in solving a broken lead handoff process is understanding the modern buying journey and unifying sales and marketing teams around the customer’s needs. Studies show that sales reps ignore 50 percent of marketing leads, and 79 percent of marketing leads are never converted into sales. For a consistent buyer experience, sales and marketing must collaborate and look at the prospect’s journey holistically.

First, it is essential to understand that buyers now drive the path to purchase. Buyers are looking increasingly to digital channels, where they can imitate their personal purchasing habits. This means they are consuming more content and doing more research to solve their challenges versus seeking out a sales rep for a conversation upfront.

To mitigate any handoff challenges, sales and marketing teams must adapt to these buying preferences, operate as a unified front, and closely map interactions with prospects along their specific buying journey—which is no longer linear.

2. Make Data-Driven Decisions

The next step is to focus more on data. Data plays two essential roles in today’s digital-first environment: fuel for automated systems, and decision support for determining the best course of action. Both applications provide insight that supports data-driven marketing and heightened personalization.

By relying on clean, enriched data, businesses can send more personalized email campaigns, retarget prospects more effectively, optimize website content, customize nurture campaigns, and more. The benefits of these practices lead to a fuller understanding of the customer’s needs and a more accurate marketing performance assessment.

While data is undoubtedly valuable, it can be daunting if you need help knowing where to start. That’s why many organizations work from siloed data, where the disconnect between CRM data and various marketing tool activity stops sales and marketing functions from identifying inaccuracies and gaps in information. Fragmented data can prevent a seamless lead handoff if leads aren’t qualified correctly, aren’t nurtured with the right content, or have disparate data across multiple lead records.

To solve for these ongoing challenges, it is imperative to establish a single unified source of data. By establishing one pool of data, businesses can eliminate gaps in customer profiles and eliminate the possibility of duplicate data. With this approach, all collected information is stored, sorted, and shared and can be seen and used by both sales and marketing teams. This brings teams together and contributes to the holistic approach of customer personalization in the buyer journey. And ultimately, handoffs become smooth and trackable when all members have the same clean data, helping to drive more revenue.

3. Automate Where You Can

Today, the buyer’s path to conversion is less linear and more of a winding path that oscillates between engagement and education. A consequence of this new buyer journey is that the traditional lead handoff from marketing to sales has shifted from a one-time event to a repeated step that can occur numerous times for one prospect. This means there is a greater chance of miscommunication between sales and marketing teams. Seventy-five percent of B2B marketing leads never convert into sales because marketing and sales teams aren’t unified and have disjointed communication. Marketing and sales automation can help streamline the handoff process.

Marketing automation comprises tools such as email marketing, campaign automation, and social marketing. These can be effective tools for obtaining more leads, engaging customers, and closing sales. Through its one-to-many approach, marketing automation focuses on a broader range of content to appeal to leads. Used in tandem, sales automation tools can be effective in one-to-one or one-to-few selling opportunities. This tech automates manual tasks so that the sales team can refocus on building stronger relationships.

When used together, this automation tech equips marketing and sales teams with the tools to guide leads through the funnel and ensure none are forgotten or slip through the cracks. These tools also help unify internal organizations and allow teams to nurture prospects using triggers that respond to specific criteria through automation.

Looking to the End Result

The lead handoff process can be a challenge for any business. SMBs looking to take back control of leads and drive revenue operations need to unify internal functions, prioritize data, and make technology investments that support the buyer journey. Only then can you benefit from greater visibility, time your lead handoffs correctly, and carry the most qualified leads to purchase. Ultimately, broken lead handoffs are entirely avoidable, but only for those willing to adapt and change—and quickly.

Margaret Wise is chief revenue officer at ClickDimensions. Wise has more than 20 years of experience helping companies leverage results from their digital customer experience platforms. As an early influencer in the CRM space, Wise continued her work in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem, followed by an expansion into marketing technology and strategy. She recently served as chief revenue officer for Arke, a leading digital marketing services consultancy. Before that, Wise served as VP of sales for Zero2Ten (now Alithya), a globally recognized Dynamics partner.