It’s my kids’ favorite song right now. It also got me thinking about the dangers of having a one-hit-wonder in your sales process.
One question that stops revenue leaders in their tracks: How many touchpoints does it take to close a deal?
It’s a number. And almost always nobody knows it. But it shouldn’t be about the number. The real (and even more paralyzing) question is: Which touchpoints move the needle?
Rarely do Marketing and Sales leaders have clear answers to either of them. That means there are touchpoints in your journey that are completely useless and create friction in your sales process 😱.
When I say touchpoints, it includes a wide range of interactions with your prospects: your content, events, calls and emails, demos, follow-up notes, conversations, and even “break up” notes.
Businesses generally look at their customer journey map to view the entire experience, usually driven by their Customer Success teams. Good businesses look at it from a value standpoint. Great businesses involve Marketing and Sales to build value-driven sales journeys vs. purely transactional and metrics-driven ones.
Touchpoint → Meaningful Interaction → Value → Sales
Luckily, I’ve been seeing a shift towards a more customer-centric marketing and sales funnel, vs. activity-centric one. For marketing, it should always be about providing more value: education, bringing insights, and facilitating meaningful interactions vs the overwhelming focus on generating conversions. And for sales, it means looking at value-producing touchpoints in the sales journey vs measuring traditional activity metrics.
What does a value-producing touchpoint look like? I boil it down to the following three factors:
Its “vanity” metrics are good: look at your traffic, shares, open rates, downloads, clicks, forwards, replies and and callbacks. Speaking of which, don’t neglect your sales calls performance metrics too.
It has a sales enablement component: It has a home in the middle or bottom parts of your sales funnel. It has longevity. Your sales team uses it proactively (and appropriately) to interact with prospects.
It triggers (positive) action - look at your sales journey data in your CRM. It should move the needle.
Can you put a number on it? You sure can! Especially if you want to scale the value-driven sales journey and produce content with positive ROI. I call it a “Value Score” and apply it when working on sales enablement playbooks.
Download free resource: Check out this starter kit for building value-driven sales journeys.
Need help? Drop me a note at marina@playbooklab.com and let’s supercharge your marketing + sales journey.
M
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