What Is A Sales Development Process?

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For a B2B business to thrive, an alignment between marketing and sales teams needs to be in motion. It is then the leads that come from the marketing are turned to customers by the sales team. 

It sounds easy, but in reality, such seamless collaboration is hard to reach.

Often, marketing teams implement a successful campaign, but the sales teams call the leads unqualified. The disconnection prevents the teams from differentiating warm leads from cold ones. 

To close the gap between the marketing and sales team and close more deals, the emerging B2B companies are implementing sales development into their existing process. 

What is sales development?

Sales development is the process or team that wamp up leads during the first two stages of the sales cycle. Their goal is to identify the best leads to reach out to and prepare them for the purchasing decision. 

The sales development teams are experts in finding potential leads, rating them, and supply the sales pipeline with quality warm leads. 

Their process goes into three phases:

  • Mark marketing and sales qualified leads (MQLs and SQLs),
  • Reach out and engage with those leads,
  • Qualify the leads into opportunities the sales team can close fast. 

Vital elements of the sales development process

A successful sales development process moves the leads through the buying journey with no effort. You need to design it in a way that helps your team be efficient. Here are five components a successful sales development process possesses.

1. CRM platform that suits your needs

CRM is a powerful tool that helps your team collect information from marketing and sales efforts. But if the CRM platform you choose adds extra admin work for the sales development team, its efficiency comes into question. 

That’s is why it is crucial to choose a CRM platform that helps teams efficiently collect the data. Those data, then, will assist them in turning leads into prospects. 

2. A well-defined lead qualification system

First, you need to have a clear understanding of what you identify as a qualified lead. Define when leads become prospects and when they move down the sales pipeline to the sales team.

If such a definition fails to happen, your sales development team will spend their valuable time and effort on non-qualified leads.

3. A shared content library

To do their job, the sales development teams use various content assets to educate and influence prospects. But when these materials are scattered all over your network, the team members spend long hours searching for advantageous materials. Eventually, they start using less effective documents because they can access them easily.

To help your teams make the best use of your content assets, create a shared content library. There all teams can easily access materials classified by buyer personas and stages of the buying cycle. 

4. Sales process analytics

Your sales development team will generate qualified leads more effectively if you power your content library with sales analytics. This way, you empower your team with data from the most effective content assets that help leads move through the buyer’s journey. 

5. A medium for collaboration and feedback

The sales development team exists as a bridge between the marketing and the sales team. For the improvement of your sales, a fruitful collaboration and feedback mechanism need to be in place.

By sharing information and data from both sides of the equation, your teams will improve and tailor tactics to be effective. 

Conclusion

Communication and collaboration sometimes are lost between marketing and sales teams. That’s why numerous B2B companies are implementing a sales development process. Through the new method, the sales development team focuses on the first two stages of the buyer’s journey to turn cold leads into warm ones. A well-designed sales development process empowers your team with tools and data to efficiently turn prospects into qualified leads.

Osmos Cloud

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