- Sales Pipeline vs. Sales Funnel: Which Works Better in Your Demand Generation Plan
- Lead Generation and the Sales Pipeline
- Demand Gen and Lead-Gen Tools For An Efficient Sales Pipeline
- Demand Generation Plan for High Volume Sales Pipeline
- Partnering with FrescoData to Create a High Volume Sales Pipeline
When it comes to generating new business, the most obvious solution is to increase your marketing efforts. But there’s more to it than that. You need to increase the volume of your lead or demand generation high volume sales pipeline. It’s the difference between filling a sales funnel and being on a first-name basis with your buyer.
But first, you must decide the goal of your demand generation plan. Is it a demand generation marketing campaign to build the brand, or is it a lead generation marketing campaign to drive revenue and expand your customer base? Marketing and sales are two very different goals and mixing the two incorrectly tends to confuse the direction of your campaign. The difference also impacts the use of a sales pipeline or sales funnel.
Sales Pipeline vs. Sales Funnel: Which Works Better in Your Demand Generation Plan?
We all know the standard five stages funnels that every marketer tells you that you need to build. But do you know the actual goal of your funnel? Then you must consider how a retail business varies from a company to business (B2B) model. And finally, where is your customer at this stage? Both in the funnel and their life.
So, it’s not a simple matter of building a sales funnel vs. a sales pipeline, and they will come. Before deciding which type of marketing automation or content you will use, you have to know all of that before choosing between a funnel or a channel, sales or marketing. When it comes to your demand generation plan, sales pipelines are significant for B2B sales process management. Business to customer (B2C) sales funnels can work well, but as pipelines are usually assigned per sales rep, they allow for greater personalization and relationship building.
A sales funnel a way to organize and manage your sales activity. It visually represents your customer’s activities within your sales pipeline. You can view it for each salesperson or for each product or service you offer to help you better understand the activity at each stage of your sales pipeline. On the other hand, the sales pipeline focuses on identifying who the leads are, how to reach them, and what to say to convince them that you’re the right fit for their needs.
The sales funnel, and the sales pipeline are vital to your demand generation efforts. Both provide different views of your demand generation campaign from the business point of view to the customers. So it’s not a matter of sales pipeline vs. sales funnel, but what are your demand generation marketing goals and how you want to analyze your demand generation efforts.
Lead Generation and the Sales Pipeline
Let’s get one thing straight; demand generation is not lead generation. Though the goal of a successful demand generation campaign is to have sales-qualified leads, it is still not lead generation. Lead generation takes place after your demand generation efforts and your target audience has been nurtured into solid leads.
Similarly, lead generation cannot be treated as demand generation in the sales pipeline. It is a sales pipeline; thus, the end goal is to generate sales. This means the leads you nurture must be sales-qualified leads at the very least.
However, creating loyal advocates is a better campaign goal to reduce lead and demand generation costs and improve retention and sales. This means a quality and personalized focused sales pipeline using highly trained sales reps brimming with customer service expertise.
As lead generation isn’t demanding generation, B2C isn’t B2B or direct to customer (D2C). Your business structure will affect the direction and resources needed in your lead generation sales pipeline. And, of course, if marketing leads is your goal, using a sales-focused pipeline may not give you the results you need. Though getting buyers is not bad, pushing out a subpar product or service is. Therefore, stick to demand generation and qualify only for marketing leads if you are not equipped for distribution, after service, etc.
Demand Gen and Lead-Gen Tools For An Efficient Sales Pipeline
According to Salesforce, a typical sales pipeline has seven main stages, and we’re going to break down the lead and demand generation tools needed at each stage. Whether you’re looking to build a large, scalable sales pipeline or a small, targeted one, there are many different tools and strategies that you can use. Remember, this is suggested for a typical sales pipeline and will need adjustment based on your target audience, current resources, and demand or lead generation marketing goals.
Prospecting
In the beginning, you are going to start content-heavy. Your customers need to be able to make informed decisions and have access to content about you and your company at any time, wherever they are. This means knowing your target audience and the platforms and sites they visit. At this stage, data on your industry, knowing what type of content to use, how, and where will be extremely important.
Lead Qualification
Data and analytics play a critical role in lead qualification. Marketing automation can assist in making lead qualification decisions based on consumer data and other demand generation metrics. What better to qualify leads than gated content and offers.
Demo or Meeting
It doesn’t just have to be a demo or meeting. It can be both or anything done to share information about your product and services. Quality content shines with presentations, videos, and even your emails at this stage.
Proposal
Stop thinking of wedding bells and think of offerings and contracts. Personalization within your offerings that show your competitive advantage works best with data to support it. This can be in testimonials, product demos, or case studies.
Negotiate
If everything falls flat at this stage, it’s time to reassess, retrain and remarket. Staff training with a heavy focus on negotiations and customer experience is what you need to get to the next stage. Not everyone is a born salesperson, and it’s up to you to decide how to maximize this particular resource.
Opportunity Won
You are not done yet. According to Statistica, the average cart abandonment rate for 2020 was 69.8%. Imagine that in dollars and cents. That’s lost revenue that can be recovered by using the right tools for payment, staff for solving customer issues, and marketing automation that facilitate a smooth sales process.
Post Purchase
Marketing automation like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Content Management Systems (CMS), or any software system or service that makes remarketing and referral marketing tactics easier should be your new best friend. They’ll help analyze and protect your consumer and business data for future dealings. And data protection and management should be important as you don’t want to spend money and time getting new leads or marketing to the wrong person.
Three standard tools prevalent throughout your sales pipeline are high-quality content, marketing automation, relevant data, and accurate analytics. Think of these three as the foundation of your sales pipeline and demand generation marketing strategy. In creating a high-volume sales pipeline in your demand generation plan, targeting will play a particular role in its success.
Demand Generation Plan for High Volume Sales Pipeline
The first thing you’ll want to do before creating your demand generation plan for a high-volume sales pipeline is to identify which tools and tactics have worked best for you in the past. This will help you determine what will work best for your current lead and demand generation sales pipeline. Next, you’ll want to identify what it will take to invest in new tactics.
This doesn’t mean just money. This is the people, the effort, the software and the time it will take to execute, and how long until you can see measurable results. Generating actual demand takes time, and not every business will see results precisely as predicted.
The best thing you can do for a successful demand generation plan is to pay attention to both the funnel and the pipeline. The sales pipeline is the path or flow of leads waiting to be converted at each stage of the pipeline. And the sales funnel is an organizational structure through which the customer journey can be used to track the movement of leads to the sales process.
Therefore monitoring how your leads flow through your pipeline from awareness, lead generation to lead qualification, conversion then retention will help you identify where your lead or demand generation sales pipeline is the weakest. How data and human resources allocation are used along the pipeline and how your marketing automation supports the process. After a thorough audit, it’s simply using the correct lead gen or demand gen tools, adjusting your resources, and understanding the data to create a high-volume sales pipeline.
The ideal way to create a high-volume sales pipeline for your lead or demand generation efforts is to increase your marketing and advertising efforts. The best way to do this is to find a solid lead or demand generation system and then improve your workflow to generate as many qualified leads or customers as possible. This increases the amount of money you make, but it also helps you improve your overall bottom line.
Partnering with FrescoData to Create a High Volume Sales Pipeline
To do this, you need relevant and accurate business data to make the right decisions regarding the type of marketing efforts, targeting, marketing automation, and content. And as the industry leader, we have experience improving the marketing and sales process for the world’s leading brands. By supplying companies with the right demand generation tools, FrescoData enables businesses to automate and scale their lead generation efforts with our industry-leading data-driven marketing platform.
We have the largest and most sophisticated collection of B2B data globally to deliver the most relevant business data for lead and demand generation efforts, including email lists, web traffic, social media data, and more. Our data strategy includes segmentation, data enhancement, and data validation and hygiene to ensure your data is as fresh and relevant as possible. Most importantly, we are serious about data protection and management, providing your consumer data is secure and accessible only to approved individuals.
Our customer service reps are qualified, certified, and trained to create the best customer experience possible. We are offering a full-featured demand generation service with a high-end, data-driven marketing automation solution for the first time. This will allow us to provide you with an efficient, scalable, and cost-effective high-volume sales pipeline.
Partner with us to strategize your next demand generation plan and turn your consumer data into marketing intelligence that drives business revenue. We can work with our clients to generate lists of qualified prospects, leads, and customers. A crucial part of our business is the ability to increase customer acquisition across the entire pipeline, from preorder to sales.
Please don’t take our word for it. Find out for yourself by contacting FrescoData today!
