Every day, I talk to business leaders who share some common sales challenges. Whether it's a business owner, VP of Sales, or a VP of marketing, the struggles are often the same. I often get asked these questions:

• How can we generate more qualified leads for our sales team?
• How can we get our sales team in front of more opportunities?

Yet, when I go to their websites, what I often find, is websites that are old, boring, static, and basically online brochures. This might be great for communicating your brand message, but its one-way communication. That could have worked back in 2008 or 2009, but it's 2019, and your prospects (and your market) expect so much more!

Marketing analytics can be overwhelming enough without having to translate the different terms included in your marketing reports. Understanding the terminology can be essential to ensuring you understand the results of your marketing efforts.

After looking over your marketing analytics, do you feel like you leave with more questions? You are not alone — our team of consultants are regularly asked to explain the difference between a bounce rate and an exit rate, and explain why the bounce rate matters.

The first quarter of the year flew by, and many are reviewing their Q1 marketing efforts. So how did you do? Are your marketing efforts paying off? How about those KPIs?

For those of you searching for some ways to improve your marketing efforts moving into the second quarter and the rest of the year, here are three tips to implement in your quarterly reviews to increase the success of your marketing campaigns moving forward.

Marketing automation has quickly risen in importance for businesses across all sectors. Surveys indicate that nearly half of all companies have adopted the technology, and that number runs even higher for B2B businesses. 91% of marketers also agree that marketing automation is “very important” for their success across different marketing channels.

Sales enablement is the technology, strategy, processes, and content that empower sales teams to sell smarter and faster. Our high-paid salespeople should be spending the majority of their time having quality appointments with potential buyers and presenting solutions, NOT trying to figure out what they're going to say and do next, having to wait on managers for coaching, or creating/finding the right content and resources to share in any given scenario. Salespeople in 2019 should be efficient and smart - so they can work smarter and faster, but also so the buying experience can be better and easier.   

It's our belief that every single successful sales organization needs sales enablement content, and today I'm sharing three types of sales enablement content that every sales team needs. 

Think about all the time your sales team isn’t at work, but you wished they were. 

When they’re on vacation.
When they’re at lunch.
When they’re commuting.
When they’re on a flight.
When they’re with their family on the weekend.

Now think about the time your sales team is at work, but they’re not involved in sales-related activity.

When they’re in a staff meeting.
When they’re filling out an expense report.
When they’re flying to a conference.
When they’re working on a proposal.
When they’re responding to an associate’s email.

The list seems never-ending. The truth is, salespeople aren’t always very productive. In fact, according to HubSpot Research, salespeople spend just one-third of their day in sales-related activities.

Now, imagine if you had a sales resource that never went on vacation, or took a break, or got sidetracked by unproductive activity. Inbound marketing is that resource.

It's easy to assume that more leads is the answer to many of your sales problems, and as a lead generation company, you’d think we’d agree. However, what we’ve found working with many different businesses, in many different industries, is that not enough leads isn’t always the root of the problem.

Instead, it's incredibly common that organizations are not set up to properly qualify, hand-off, follow up with, and convert the leads they are generating, letting those hard-earned marketing efforts go to waste. 

To truly determine if your business is A) ready for more leads and B) making the most of the leads you’re currently generating, it's vital to take a look at some important metrics/areas. Here’s the short list:

Today’s economic indicators seem to be positive. Unemployment rates are down. GDP numbers are up. And it seems that more and more companies are meeting, and even exceeding, their revenue growth objectives. Favorable economic conditions are always welcome, but we all know that success just doesn’t happen. It takes hard work and preparation from a lot of people to grow a business.

Preparation can take a lot of different forms – hiring, training, building out processes, and leveraging new technology. Proper preparation also requires that we re-evaluate our infrastructure. Do we have the essential elements in place in which to build upon? Our houses have infrastructure – foundation, plumbing, electrical, heating, and air conditioning, etc. Our marketing has required infrastructure as well. Below is a list of the basic marketing infrastructure elements critical to growing a company.

Many marketing departments are faced with a similar problem. The reality that the field of marketing is ever-evolving (and ever-growing with responsibilities). The problem comes when the responsibilities continue to grow, but your marketing department is only one department, and the team is not able to carry the massive load it takes to be successful with the marketing strategy. With that said, finding an agency partner to assist your marketing team can be the perfect solution.

At LeadG2, we take pride in our ability to work seamlessly in conjunction with your marketing department and come alongside our partners as an extension of their core marketing team. Any quality marketing agency partner should fill a void and take on responsibilities as part of the core team. So how do we do it, you ask?

Governments repair and build roads. Utility companies run new transmission lines and fiber optics. And at home, we attach rain gutters to our houses and add-on new rooms. These are all examples of enhancing infrastructure. Even at work, we get new computers, new phones, and new desk chairs. Those too are infrastructure upgrades. 

Sales and marketing organizations have infrastructures as well.  Websites, sales collateral, CRM, marketing automation, and email are all examples of marketing infrastructure basics. How often does your firm evaluate the status of your marketing infrastructure? Do you have everything you need? What are you missing? Is everything working as it should? Like any infrastructure (roads, bridges, roofs, plumbing, etc.), a marketing infrastructure can become less effective if it’s neglected. And a neglected marketing infrastructure will eventually lead to ineffective marketing plans and missed revenue targets.