Your Sales Team Decides Whether Marketing Pays Off
When a company tells me "marketing doesn't work," I usually find the leads were fine. What happened after the leads came in is the problem. On the latest Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed, Craig Andrews and I talked about ROI as a measurement of your whole revenue system, and a big part of that system sits with the sales team. If your sales process isn't built to follow up, qualify and close, you can spend a lot on marketing and have very little to show for it.
Know your numbers first
Most owners I meet have a goal: $1 million, $10 million, $100 million. Very few know what that goal means. How many clients? How many small, medium and large ones? How many proposals, final meetings and first meetings does it take?
That's what the revenue cookbook does. It breaks the goal down so you can track every week whether you're doing what it takes, instead of hoping you're close enough when October and November roll around. Once the bones are in place, you fill in how you'll get there: which campaigns, which associations, how much from renewals versus new business.
Follow up within two business days
The biggest leaky bucket I see isn't the webinar or the ad. It's the stack of business cards from the networking event or trade show sitting on a desk for a week, two weeks, a month.
My rule is simple. When I meet someone, I follow up within two business days. If someone says "we should talk," I get back to them the next day. After a trade show, I'm following up that Monday or Tuesday, unless we agreed on a different time.
Your prospects are just as busy as you are. Let a few weeks go by and they've forgotten the conversation. If you want to make yourself sick, add up the booth, the travel, the giveaways and the hourly cost of everyone who worked the event. Then let the follow-up slide. That's money down the drain, and it hurts your credibility too. If someone showed interest and you never called, what does that tell them about how you'll treat them as a client?
Be in the right rooms
The other mistake: showing up at the wrong events. Even if you do everything right, there may be no real prospects there.
One of my clients is a small to mid-sized construction management firm. They belonged to eight professional associations and were spending somewhere around $30,000 to $40,000 a year on them. We looked at each one: why they joined, how often they went, and whether it brought in clients, subcontractors or education they'd otherwise pay for. About two-thirds earned their keep. For the rest, the answer to "why did you join?" was "somebody suggested it a couple of years ago." We pruned three or four of them.
I do that exercise with my clients every year. Look at the money, but also the time. Time is the cost people forget.
Sell the problem you solve
Marketing can get you in front of the right person. If you then give the verbal brochure (here's what we do, here's our product), you lose them. People don't care what you do. They care whether you solve a problem for them: more money, less cost, an easier life. Focus on WIIFM, what's in it for me. If they don't get that, they'll treat you like a commodity and only buy if you're the cheapest. This is a core piece of our sales training.
Close rate and time in the pipeline
Once qualified leads are in the pipeline, watch two things: close rate and how long deals sit there. If the team isn't qualifying well, setting clear next steps and pushing for a decision one way or the other, either the close rate drops or a deal that should take two conversations takes five months.
Have the budget conversation early. Too many teams send a proposal or engagement letter without ever discussing price, then wonder why they're getting ghosted. Your people should be asking good questions and learning what will drive a decision, not just presenting. When that doesn't happen, the finger-pointing between sales and marketing starts, and the owner starts wondering whether they have the right people. Ongoing sales coaching is how we keep those habits in place.
Track where every opportunity comes from
I'm agnostic about which CRM you use, as long as you're tracking. For every opportunity I want to know where it came from, how long it was in the pipeline and what it closed for. That tells you whether you're bringing in the right clients, whether you have too many small ones, and whether you're selling a lot of a service that isn't very profitable.
It also shows you your best source. For me, that's referrals from really happy clients. They warm up the prospect before I ever talk to them, and my close rates go way up. Keep clients happy and retention pays you twice.
The bottom line
Track the numbers. Have a process. Have a system, and yes, some might call it a playbook, for what you need to do to hit your revenue goal. Sometimes an outside advisor spots the one or two small changes an owner is too close to see. If you want a second set of eyes on your pipeline, let's talk.
🎧 Watch or listen to the full episode on Sales & Marketing Playbook: Unleashed.
