In my recent posts I have been focusing on each one of the 6 Key Steps to Successful Content Marketing Campaigns.

Today let’s focus on the last step – turning your ideal prospects over to your sales department and their reps to close the sale.

You’ll recall in this marketing campaign you have gone through a series of marketing steps. Each one follows up on the previous one. They take your ideal prospect from someone totally unfamiliar with your company and the service or product you offer to realizing they desperately need what you offer. They also realize your company is the only one they can buy it from.

The first five steps are:

• Identify Your Niche.

• Build a Profile of Your Ideal Customer.

• Build Trust with Your Ideal Customer.

• Introduce Your Service or Product to Your Ideal Customer.

• Make It Clear to Your Ideal Customer Why They Need to Buy from You.

The Right Time to Turn a Prospect Over to Your Sales People

When you reach the last step, your marketing has done its job. Your prospect is anxious to buy the service or product they need from your company. It’s time to turn the prospect over to your sales department. They can assign one of their reps to contact the prospect, cement the relationship you’ve created with them, make any presentation necessary and finalize the sale.

Your sales department and their sales reps already should have a general overview of how you identify ideal prospects and the steps you have taken them through to nurture their desire to purchase what they need from you.

Now you need to give them the specifics on this prospect. How you identified them, the specific people you are working with and the marketing pieces you used to bring them to this point. They need this information so they can have the same intimate knowledge of the prospect you have. From this they can identify the approach to take with them. They also can figure out what they’ll need to do to get the prospect to buy right now.

 Most of the Heavy Work with the Prospect Has Been Done

They are now at the point where they are primed for your sales rep to contact them. They are already familiar with your service or product and know why your company is the best one to get it from. All your sales rep has to do is cement your company’s position with them and make the sale.

No cold calls are necessary. No gatekeepers to get through. No challenge to get your service or product in front of them. Your sales rep can concentrate on what they do best. Presenting the face of your company to the prospect and showing them everything you have told them about your service or product and your company is true.

A far cry from the old way of doing business.

The Potential Disaster of Bringing Sales in Too Early

It can be detrimental to bring your sales department and sale rep in at an earlier point in this process. The reason here is obvious. Your prospect can be confused by the marketing pieces they’re getting from you and the contact they’re getting from the sales reps. They may be told different things about your service or product. They may also get different information about your company.

Even in those instances where your sales department or their sales reps identify an ideal prospect they want to target, they should turn that prospect over to your department and let you send the marketing pieces out. They can follow up with you regularly to see how this is going.

When your marketing department has done its work and is ready to turn the prospect over to the sales department, the sale rep who originally identified the prospect will start to contact them.