money circles

Typically, the last quarter of the year is the most important to make a healthy and profitable year. Here's six marketers' recommendations on what companies need to do to close outstanding sales leads during this time.

Jennifer Marsnik, senior account manager, Edge Legal Marketing. Email: [email protected].

Qualified leads typically understand the benefits of your offering, so now it's time to emphasize what sets you apart and give them a reason to buy sooner rather than later. Marketers can help convert leads to customers by providing useful tools and advice to the sales team. If you are selling a technology product, detailed spec sheets and independent product reviews can highlight key differentiators. Service providers should have case studies and client references to help convey your abilities and reputation.

Especially in Q4, you may need to revisit pricing to finalize a deal. Consider offering a pricing promotion to create a greater sense of urgency to close new sales by year-end. Help the sales team use pricing to their advantage with messaging that conveys the proper value proposition – a high price point should be positioned as “premium” or “exclusive”; lower price points are “economical.”

Buyers need confidence in your company and its ability to deliver on a promise. Evidence of your expertise can be shared via thought leadership and educational offerings, or with awards or impressive rankings among competitors. In cases where you feel you can build confidence with a lead by developing a strong personal relationship, work with sales to host a memorable social event. Small group or one-on-one personal interaction can help push a lead to make a final purchase decision more quickly.

Above all, remember that the members of the sales team are your partners. A little collaboration goes a long way and will help you both finish the year strong!

Christy Burke, founder, Burke & Company. Email: [email protected].

One of the biggest challenges in selling to law firms and corporate legal departments is creating a sense of urgency to motivate the buyer. The good news about Q4 is that it comes with a built-in sense of urgency for companies, especially those that use the calendar year as their fiscal year. These companies often have budget money to burn before the end of the year. If they don't use it, they'll lose it, so make sure they spend it on your product! Even organizations that don't close their books at the end of December may still be poised to act in Q4. They may have an unfulfilled New Year's resolution, for example, or an unmet goal to buy or upgrade a particular type of technology, increase efficiency or put new systems in place to please highly valued clients.

Marketers should contact all of their clients, prospects and suspects at the beginning of Q4. Email is a great way to reach out to some, but phone calls, handwritten notes and in-person visits may be warranted for high-potential situations. Though time-consuming and possibly expensive, this comprehensive outreach can bring in new business and provide up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. It may even prevent loss of business if, during the outreach process, you discover a disgruntled client before it's too late.

Bob Berger, senior digital marketing and communications consultant, Plat4orm PR. Email: [email protected].

At every step of the selling process, choosing the right content can help move a prospect deeper in the sales funnel. But never is it more important than at the close. After an arduous process of getting meetings, involving key stakeholders and delivering presentations, the single most important thing marketing can give a salesperson is a bridge.

If all of your content has been spot-on, the only thing sales need to close an important deal is a tightly defined message. That message needs to depict sales' understanding of a prospect's needs, and how a certain product or service can answer their problem. A bridging moment like that will close the deal.

Cathy Kenton, founder, Legal Vendor Strategies. Email: [email protected].

Marketing and sales alignment is often mentioned but rarely implemented. Marketers tend to focus on lead generation and brand awareness, while the sales team is tasked with closing those leads generated by marketing. Here are three things marketing can do to help bridge the gap:

1. Ask your sales team what questions their prospects are asking. Create content to answer those questions in the form of blog posts, FAQs and other content that sales can share with prospects.

2. Turn your sales team into thought leaders. Help your sales reps create and publish content that displays their expertise, and prospects will be more likely to want to engage with them.

3. Schedule a meeting now between the two groups and ask your sales team how marketing can help them. Is it a case study—or a series of case studies—sales can use to prove success? A timely promotion that will produce year-end sales? A product enhancement that will help close more deals?

It's not too late to help sales with those fourth-quarter goals. And it's never too early to make certain the lines of communication are open and the two teams are aligned and working together to achieve their mutual goals.

Ari Kaplan, principal, Ari Kaplan Advisors. Email: [email protected].

Savvy marketers can help their sales teams stand out and close leads toward the end of the year by combining creativity with actionable intelligence. Specifically:

  • Produce collateral that addresses the benefits of collaborating while acknowledging the issues your company's prospects are struggling with. This balanced approach will simultaneously persuade potential clients/customers to act and assuage their concerns about doing so.
  • Provide a recap of industry trends based on key events over the course of the year. This is likely to give the sales team data which they can use in their year-end meetings. It can also provide an outline for discussion and simplify the final pitch.
  • Summarize your company's most persuasive selling points in a creative infographic, which emphasizes why your targets should work with you and the various reasons that others have made that choice. Similarly, consider repurposing PowerPoint slides into checklists that your sales team can leave behind as additional resources.
  • Create a year-end event or webinar to which your sales team can invite strong prospects as a way of following up on prospective opportunities and setting the foundation for new initiatives in January.

Chelsey Lambert, founder and CEO, Legal Technology Media Group. Email: [email protected].

The role of marketing is to support sales by nurturing and identifying the prospects that are closest to making a decision. In the last quarter of the year, a daily conversation should be happening with the leader(s) of the sales team(s). Which includes challenges, success patterns, and overall conversion rates. Based on those responses, marketing should create campaigns, that drive prospects to book appointments, schedule demos or finalize their decision before the desired target date.

All campaigns should be created to address the unique concerns or stages of the prospects who the sales team is working on. For example, a different series of messages should be sent to prospects who are considered; cold, warm, or hot. By doing so, efforts can be focused on closing the most responsive clients first while marketing continues to nurture the rest of the pipeline.

Extra credit: In addition to working on the leads they have, marketing should run new campaigns to replenish the pipeline, replacing the 'lost deals' so that revenue goals can still be achieved. The new campaigns also create a healthy pipeline of fresh contacts to make Quarter 1 numbers as strong as they can possibly be. Often a lack-luster time period as organizations drain their pipeline in the last quarter of the year.