Why do Sales and Marketing Hate Each Other?
Hate might be a strong work, but for as long I have been in sales there has always been tension between sales and marketing. There is a clear gap between the two units within the majority of companies.
Sales always asks, “what does marketing do all day?” They are in lots of meetings (which are usually catered), delegate work to outside agencies, have big budgets, are always taking about web traffic, new content that’s in the pipeline (which never actually appears), MQLs, SQLs, and are slow to pass leads to sales.
Marketing always asks, “what does sales do all day?” They never generate any of their own opportunities, only focus on existing deals, refuse to bring in any customers for testimonials, don’t help with events and are slow to follow up with new leads.
There is a key overlapping issue that continuously drives tenson and stress between sales and marketing. Sales and marketing are both SLOW WHEN IT COMES TO LEADS. Marketing is allegedly slow to pass leads to sales. Sales is allegedly slow to contact and qualify new leads. When it comes to leads, the link between sales and marketing is broken.
Enter the SDR. The savior of lead disfunction. SDRs are supposed to be ready to qualify new inbound leads the moment they complete a web form. When they aren’t qualifying new inbound leads, SDRs are supposed to focus on generating new opportunities through outbound activities. The reality is far from this.
No matter the size of the company, SDRs quickly get swamped with tasks not related to immediately contacting and qualifying new inbound leads and generating outbound opportunities. Instead of doing their core tasks, SDRs end up attending internal meetings for both sales and marketing. Being the nexus between sales and marketing, how could they not be invited to attend both meetings? Additionally, they shadow all of sales’ discovery calls. How could they not? As a reward for booking the meeting they surely should attend the 45–60-minute call so they can surf the web and not listen. After a grueling time “listening” to a sales call there is no better way to recharge your batteries than a friendly ping pong match with a fellow SDR. Very quickly adding SDRs into the inbound lead qualification mix adds to the problem of no one having the time to immediately follow up with inbound prospects, but at a higher cost.
Enter Sentient SDR, which has been purpose built to solve the inbound lead qualification breakdown between sales and marketing. Here is how it works. A prospect completes a web form requesting more information. Sentient springs into action and immediately calls or opens a chat (in 5 seconds or less) with the prospect. A qualification call ensues based off of questions you have trained Sentient on. However, instead of blindly asking each question and waiting for a response, Sentient has the ability to weave the questions into a more natural conversation with your prospect. Sentient can be trained to back up claims with market research, data, product information and much more. As the call unfolds, Sentient SDR will propose a next step of either a meeting with someone, a free trial or whatever you want it to do. The goal of Sentient is to get that inbound lead into your company as quickly as possible, gather the basic information and then solidify a next step with the prospect so they sales cycle can continue.
Once you are qualifying inbound leads instantly, your SDRs and Sales team can focus on outbound lead generation activities.
Sentient is the bridge to bring sales and marketing together, driving faster pipeline growth and increased revenue.