What Is A Marketing & Sales Service Level Agreement?

A service level agreement is a contract between two parties that defines the expected level of service. It holds each team accountable to specific, agreed-upon expectations that align to the same goal.

We recommend that you create a service level agreement between sales and marketing teams that details both marketing goals (like number of leads or pipeline revenue) and the sales activities that will follow and support them (like following up on leads qualified by marketing). Both teams use this document as a commitment to support each other, based on concrete, numerical goals.

Why Is A Service Level Agreement Important?

According to the 2017 State of Inbound report by Hubspot, fewer than half of all marketers would describe their respective companies' Sales and Marketing teams as "generally aligned."

Marketers are tired of their lead opportunities being wasted by sales. Why should we spend all this time and money just to generate leads that aren’t effectively being nurtured through the buyer’s journey?

But it’s not just the marketers that are frustrated.  Sales representatives consistently complain that the leads marketers generate aren’t qualified enough. 

Can’t we find a way to get along?

We’re extremely lucky here at Incept to not only have a strong sales and marketing relationship, but also a bunch of experience coaching other organizations to create a more cohesive approach for their sales and marketing departments.

3 Things You Need to Know When Preparing a Lead Generation Campaign

In a lot of cases, clients will come to us having little to no material on the campaign they want to launch aside from the desired end-result whether that be a survey, appointment, registrations, etc. Part of our job as the lead generation experts is being able to work with the client to help them realize the resources we need to help them reach their goals. Here’s a quick guide of a few things to lock down to ensure a smooth launch of your lead generation campaign.  

Your Target Market

First and foremost, you’re going to need to have your target market nailed down as specific as possible. Think to yourself, “Who is our ideal customer & where do we find this person?” Knowing things like industry, job title, & company size can help you skip a lot of steps when making initial contact. Even if your product or service can theoretically be applied to multiple markets – it’s best to streamline your focus on only one at a time.

Call Objectives

Establish benchmarks. What’s the most optimistic outcome that can happen from each call? Perhaps it’s an actual sale if you’re reaching out to either a customer or lapsed customer list. Maybe even a sales appointment if your approach is cold.

Now that you've established your optimistic call objective, what’s the minimum you want to get out of each attempt? This will probably start with confirming that the name of the person you have on your list is, in fact, the decision-maker you’re looking for. This can look like the following:

“Before you send me to voicemail, Mike still heads up your IT department right?”

If the operator or receptionist is friendly, take advantage and acquire an email address. Make each dial count.

Lead Follow-Up Plan

You’ve established interest from a prospect! Now what? In some cases, you’ll have a 'closer' dedicated to only follow-up activity. If you don’t have that luxury, you need an organized plan of attack as to who will be handling this crucial step. You would be surprised how often leads slip through the cracks because companies don’t appropriately follow up in a timely manner.

You can learn more about our ideal lead follow-up process here.

#RelationshipsMatter | Employee Spotlight: Caleb Welch

Incept is a place where relationships matter. We're a creative, diverse, and engaging community uniting more than 200 team members with Fortune 500 companies, blood centers, and B2B sales teams across the United States and we want to share some of the stories from the people that make this team great every day.

Today we bring you Caleb Welch, Incept Grow's Operations Manager.

TRANSCRIPT:

My name is Caleb Welch. I am the Operations Manager here at Incept for our Grows division, and my job is to manage the day-to-day operation of our Account Growth Specialists.

Working in the lead generation industry for me is really fun because it allows you to make and find relationships you wouldn't typically find in a normal job setting, so I think the knowledge that I'm able to capture from relationships as I build them allows me to make the relationships I already have a lot stronger.

The most impactful relationship here at Incept is actually one that most people don't get the opportunity to say they have. I think having the relationship with the CEO and owner of this company and watching how he operates, not only what he says and announces to a team of his employees, but how he actually acts in a one-on-one situation. The things that I've learned from him professionally are astounding.  The other thing is to watch him take time out of his day, his personal time, to meet with me to help me through some personal issues he heard about through the grapevine or some issues that I brought up that might affect my time here.

How he dealt with that and the things he shared, his personal experience with, just blew my mind when it comes to what I need to do with my team and how this company functions, and to have that with the CEO and owner of our company is just ... It's crazy.

Favorite thing I did last year - I was asked by my wife's sister to officiate her wedding. At first, I was like, "Hey, I don't know about how I'm going to do this." I went online, and I got my certification, and I got the official letter from the state to allows me to officiate weddings, and so September rolled around, and I got the opportunity to be the officiant for my sister-in-law and her new husband, and to be a big part of their big day was probably the most amazing experience I've had in a long time.

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE

Want to get to know Caleb a little more? See if you can spot which one is the lie in a game of Two Truths and a Lie:

Think you know the answer? Find out here. 

The Best Lead Generation Companies To Work With in 2018

We're often asked who our favorite players in the lead generation industry are. While there are many great sales partners all around the United States, we do have a few favorites.

Keep reading to see the four best lead generation companies to work with this year:

Launch Leads

Launch Leads began in 2009 after recognizing a need in the marketplace to enable established or emerging businesses to grow faster and increase efficiency within their sales and marketing efforts to add sales revenue and profitability.

Why We Love Them: We think their Executive Sales Assistant program is such a unique offering because it allows a team to have a dedicated “executive assistant” that is trained in the specifics of the B2B sales process to help drive prospects from the top of the funnel to a closed sale.

Location: Utah

Specializations:

• B2B Prospecting
• Appointment Setting
• Sales Lead Generation
• Client Profiling
• Lead List Generation and Clean Up
• Immediate Response to Web Leads
• Event Registration and Follow Up

Website: https://www.launchleads.com/

SyncShow

SyncShow's mission is to professionalize the sales and marketing infrastructure for the American manufacturing industry by providing manufacturers the latest insights and tools they need to market and sell to today’s buyers.

Why We Love Them: SyncShow is a local lead generation company dedicated to helping the manufacturing industry grow through inbound and digital marketing. The commitment to supporting the manufacturing industry exclusively is near and dear to our hearts.

Location: Ohio

Specializations:

• Lead generation
• Lead nurturing
• Website development
• Strategic marketing plans

Website: https://www.syncshow.com/

Inside Sales Team

Inside Sales Team is a full-service sales and marketing firm that integrates with their clients to deliver the best results with the most transparent relationship. They become a full-time extension of their clients' sales teams and leverage data and technology to lead their clients to the right contacts and close new business quickly and effectively.

Why We Love Them: We love Inside Sales Team because they aren't just another call center - they are a team of sales professionals trained in Account Based Management (ABM), the perfect match for companies targeting large, highly-desirable accounts. 

Location: New York

Specializations:

• Inbound lead generation
• Lead Enhancement
• Appointment setting
• Customer retention & renewals
• Event management

Website: http://insidesalesteam.com/

Drips

Through millions of daily conversations and interactions, Drips has created business intelligence that yields conversion for businesses across hundreds of industries. They analyze every customer conversation to capture and interpret the intent of their clients' potential customers in order to help their clients generate more leads and set more appointments.

Why We Love Them: Drips is another local company that we met at a start-up conference a couple years ago. They're passionate about what they do and hungry for success, which we really love to see.

Location: Ohio

Specializations:

• Lead follow-up
• Conversion optimization
• Multi-channel marketing - SMS, chat, email and direct mail

Website: https://drips.com/

#RelationshipsMatter | Employee Spotlight: Timothy Serafino

Incept is a place where relationships matter. We're a creative, diverse, and engaging community uniting more than 200 team members with Fortune 500 companies, blood centers, and B2B sales teams across the United States and we want to share some of the stories from the people that make this team great every day.

Today we bring you Timothy Serafino, Incept's Business Development Manager.

Transcript:

My name's Timothy Serafino. I am the Business Development Manager here at Incept for our Incept Grows division. In my role now I am responsible for helping find local companies who need lead generation and inside sales support.

Working in the lead generation industry is really interesting for me. I've enjoyed the opportunities I've had to have conversations with people in all sorts of different industries about their growth plans, their desires to become better companies, better business leaders, and ultimately sales and new business development is something that's kind of industry-agnostic.  Everyone needs it and everyone wants it and everyone, to some degree, is trying to crack the code and figure out what the best way to go about that is.  So to introduce us as a unique approach to that problem has always been a really fun conversation across both business-to-business and business-to-consumer type industries and businesses.

Relationships are so much fun for me to make new ones and stay in touch with current ones and cultivate whoever I can, both personally and professionally. I've had the unique opportunity to generate relationships with people all over the world, and my favorite part about those conversations, whether they're personal friends that I have in Australia or business contacts that I have right here in Canton, it's just that everyone has a story to tell, everyone has something to share with the world and something to teach me as a person. Again, whether it's personally or professionally I love learning from the people around me and meeting new people and hearing their stories.

My favorite thing that I did this year was and I was fortunate to be able to, was take a two-month kind of sabbatical from work to go backpack Eastern Europe with my wife, so we ended up seeing something like 15 countries in two months.

Again, my name's Timothy Serafino. I'm the Business Development Manager here for Incept Grows division at Incept, where relationships matter.

Two Truths and a Lie

Want to get to know Timothy a little more? See if you can spot which one is the lie in a game of Two Truths and a Lie:

Think you know the answer? Find out here.