The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

11Converting Inbound Interest into Revenue

At least five times per month, I would receive the following email from one of our account managers at HubSpot:

Mark,

I could use your help with one of our customers. The customer signed up for HubSpot six months ago. They are doing great with their inbound marketing. When the customer signed up, they were getting a few dozen leads through their website per month. Now they are getting over 500 leads per month!

Here is the issue. The salespeople hate the leads. They believe the lead quality is really low. Would you mind jumping on a call with their head of marketing and their head of sales to help figure out the issue?

Of course I was willing to help. Every time I did, I found the same set of issues. Some of the issues were caused by the manner in which marketing was handling the leads. Some of the issues were caused by the manner in which sales was handling the leads. I will elaborate on both sets of issues in this chapter.

Marketing's Role in Converting Interest into Revenue

The Internet has empowered buyers. In many cases, the first few stages of the buying journey happen online. As such, marketing is playing an ever increasing role in the selling process, nurturing these prospects and passing them to sales at precisely the right time.

Here are the most common mistakes and the most important best practices marketing needs to adopt as they work with sales to convert interest into revenue.

The Most Common Mistake: Don't Pass All ...