Many early-stage sales engagements happen almost exclusively online today sales and marketing executives who understand and plan for this will increase revenue. Buyers do not need a sales rep until they are further along in the discovery phase. These buyers are researching online, receiving and forwarding emails. These online behaviors can give us important clues about each buyers interests and inclination towards a certain product, or service. Each page visited carries an indication of interest, each email that is opened, or clicked indicates a response to a certain message. Each keyword, or phrase used in a search engine is indicative of hidden questions, or interests. Every email that is opened, clicked, or otherwise interacted with shows a certain response to each and every individual message. Each visit, or interaction with social media can also be used as a prompt, or give insight into each buyers mindset. The Online body language of buyers can be collected, sorted and analyzed to derive a wealth of information about a prospective buyer.

It can give clues as to area of interest, stage of process, objections and barriers to entry. This online body language gives marketers the knowledge and insight needed to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. To get this data it is important to have five elements in your revenue creation process.

  1. Discoverable Information: Marketers need to make their message, or information discoverable by buyers. This information must be given at that right time and in the right media channel to attract the buyers attention.
  2. Understand Buyers Stage: The best sales professionals focus on understanding where ea. buyer is in the buying process. This information can be found, analyzed and discovered by careful observation of the buyers online body language.
  3. Coordinated Efforts: Sales and Marketing must bridge their gap and act as  a team to generate the insight and efficiency alluded to in this post.
  4. Clean Data: clean data is like oil, or gasoline to the fire it must be clean and available for ea. initiative to take off. The data must be qualified, consistent and complete.
  5. Actionable Analysis: This must drive action. Revenue performance can only be managed if you correctly analyze and allocate investments towards the efficient and consistent results.

Following these steps and strategically investing resources and time into the right buyer with the right message will shorten your sales cycle. Marketing and Sales can increase their relevance by continually forecasting, anticipating and guiding revenue many months and quarters in advance with great precision.