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

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 the Leads to Sales

The first step in establishing the Marketing SLA was to define when a lead would be qualified to be passed to the Sales team. This topic was covered thoroughly in Chapter 11. The decision to pass a lead to Sales is best derived from the Buyer Matrix.

Inbound Marketing,

The first application that originated from these efforts was Sidekick, available for free at www.getsidekick.com.

As an executive, don't think about taking on these tasks yourself. Think instead about creating a content production process. Delegate the process to specialists. That is your job here. Building your content production team is not easy. But once you have the team in place, the hard part is over.

So how does long-tail theory apply to your business? As you embark on a content product process, focus on the “long tail,” not on the “head,” especially when selecting target topics. If you sell IT services, don't focus on phrases like “IT consultant” or “information technology.” These words sit at the head of the curve. Yes, there are millions of

“The Marketing SLA provides a framework to put Marketing

Sales technology creates better buying experiences for customers by capturing customer context and making that context readily available to salespeople.

Which type of lead do you think closed at a higher rate—the product collateral download or the active free trial? The active free trial closed at a higher rate, of course! This type of lead was further along in the buyer journey. It was at the “Solution Selection” stage of the buyer journey, rather than the “Solution Research” stage. In our case, a