6 HUGE Mistakes that Will Kill Your Sales Pipeline by Jae-ann Rock

Companies marketing and selling to Corporate Training & HR often make several critical mistakes causing:

• A weak sales pipeline
• Anemic revenue numbers
• Turnover of high powered sales reps

You are likely making at least one of these mistakes. Choosing to ignore them or assuming you have them mastered can lead to even bigger problems down the line. 

As a matter of fact, if left unaddressed, these six mistakes can slowly kill your business. Below, we will tackle each mistake and provide recommended solutions to prevent you from falling into these pipeline-killing traps. 

1.) Forcing your Sales Reps to Hunt-and-Peck for Leads

Is your professional sales team forced to:

• Work through an outdated, limited set of in-house contacts?
• Hunt for their own leads online via LinkedIn, Data.com, “Top 100” lists, or other sources?
• Wade through a morass of poor quality trade show leads to find real buyers?
• Move away from selling time to become Research Analysts?

Every minute your salespeople spend digging for leads they are NOT making sales call. Do you really want your salespeople spending their valuable time doing on non-value added work? If you’re looking for more high-quality leads, see #2!

2.) Not Marketing to ENOUGH LEADS

Are you using an outdated, in-house list to market and sell your services? Without enough NEW leads being added to the process on a regular basis, results will suffer.

Do you NEED MORE LEADS? If you market to Corporate Training & HR, you’re in luck!

• Mentor Tech Group is the only company specialized exclusively in the Corporate Training & HR Markets!
• Mentor Tech Group has hand-built a database of more than 40,000+ decision-maker contacts in Training & HR to whom you can market and sell your services.
• We have done all the hard work for you!

3.) Driving the BEST Reps Out of the Company

By not giving your reps what they need to succeed, you are Decreasing Morale & Increasing Turnover.

• Simply stated: you may be driving your best reps right out of the company.  
• When your highest achieving reps – your most valuable asset – finally get fed up with having to constantly dig for their own leads, they will move on to pursue more rewarding work elsewhere.
• Decreased value-added work, reduced morale, and the resulting diminished earnings will always lead to costly employee turnover.
• Don’t create this situation, especially when there is a solution right at your fingertips!

4.) Treating All Leads Equally

Not all leads are created “equal”!

So…be sure to determine ways to segment your database and create custom campaigns for each group:

• Use ranking criteria to determine and assign the quality of each lead into A, B, or C.
• Once leads are grouped, develop a sales and marketing strategy for each lead quality group.
• Further segment your list by various criteria (e.g. Industry, company revenue, geography, number of employees, etc. The Mentor Tech Group database provides this ability!!)
• Develop customized sales and marketing campaigns for each group segment.

5.) NOT Following Email Marketing Best Practices 

If you’re using email marketing as a means of business development, take the time to do it right, or you will run the risk of alienating your audience and increasing your “unsubscribe” rate!

So, when leveraging email marketing, be sure to follow these basic steps:

1. • Provide value-added, educational content. Content should be 90% informational, and only 10% promotional.
   • Consistency is the Key! Send newsletter campaigns at regular intervals, without fail. Layer in additional specialized campaigns as noted in #4.
   • Evoke people to “click” on email content that interests them by creating “Email Teaser” content –  i.e. use brief bulletized email content, designed to quickly pique interest, with links requiring the recipient click through to read the entire article.
   • People who clicked on the email are good targets for further investigation. Follow-up with a phone call within 48 hours!
   • Use a provoking subject line to encourage people to open the email. (Use of www.SubjectLine.com can help.)
   • Use a marketing automation tool to track all email opens, clicks, and unsubscribes.
   • Track and remove all unsubscribes from subsequent email campaigns.
   • Follow all anti-spam legislation when using email marketing. This is serious business! For more, see CAN-SPAM (US), CASL (Canada), and GDPR (Euro).

6.) “Nothing replaces a phone call!”

Don’t let your sales reps rely solely on email marketing efforts to generate qualified leads.

INSTEAD, always include phone-based lead development as a core part of your outreach plan:

• Create a plan to call on each lead on a regular basis according to their “lead quality” score.
• Mark each lead for follow-up in the tickler file (preferably in a CRM system).
• Track the results.
• Call on all email campaign “clickers” within 48 hours after the campaign.  You never know who may be ready to buy now!

As a leader in your organization, you must always be on the lookout for ways to continuously improve your sales and marketing process and results. Review this list above and determine any areas in need of improvement, then take action ASAP! 

Start by picking up the phone to call Mentor Tech Group today. Let us walk you through the simple “success formula” other MTG clients have used to develop a sales pipeline of qualified Corporate Training & HR leads with real revenue opportunity! 

Mentor Tech Group offers the most accurate, highly targeted lists of more than 40,000+ decision-maker contacts in corporate training, HR, e-learning, and talent management!

Remember what’s included with your Mentor Tech Group investment:

• 100% human-verified data; Our database is hand-built and maintained by a team of Market Intelligence Consultants to ensure data quality
• Confirmed Decision-Makers contacts in your target industry: Corporate Training / HR / Talent Management / e-Learning
• Sorted by Job Function – not nebulous Job Title (We help you reach the people responsible for making the decisions!)
• Access to proven industry best practices – find out “what works” for others in your industry
• Four-month FREE data updates, to keep up with the constant changes in this industry

Corporate Training & HR is MTG’s ONLY focus, and that makes all the difference!  We’re here to help you reach the decision-makers you need, whenever you’re ready.

Call us today: (651) 457-8600, Ext. 1

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