"You're fired."

The owner of a $10MM manufacturing firm had called us into their offices to review the performance of their marketing program. When we heard they wanted to "fire us," we were perplexed. "Fire us?" we asked the entrepreneur, "The Inbound Marketing Machine™ we created for your business has improved the number of qualified leads from 30 a month to well over 100 per month…why would you want to fire us?"

He responded very simply, "Revenue has not increased at all."

It turns out his traditional sales department was overwhelmed with the new inflow of leads and really wasn't equipped to handle the leads. Why? No system.

Our team asked for a reprieve and offered to spend some time with the sales team to see what was happening, and then help them develop a process for taking inbound leads from conversion to close. What we did was simply to implement the 5 D's Sales Process.

If you have an effective inbound marketing program, then the opportunities come to you. Your job is to sift through all of the leads and pursue the ones that are the best fit for your company. The goal of the sales process is to get the unqualified prospects OUT of the system and focus on the ones that are a good fit. We don't want to waste time on unqualified leads, but we do want to spend a lot of time on the companies we wish to do business with.

The first "D" is the Discovery Call.

As a first step, we suggest your sales team spends 30 minutes on a call qualifying the prospect and getting a feel if it's a "fit." Don't be alarmed if more qualify out than qualify in.

If it appears like a fit, then you might want to continue the process and schedule a longer meeting for 90 minutes, either in person or via a tool like WebEx.

That's the second "D", the Diagnostic Meeting.

In the diagnostic, you can pepper prospects with hundreds of questions to really understand today's situation and tomorrow's goals. Then weave in the details of your engagement and challenge them to think differently. At the end of this session, your team should have enough information to develop a plan and a set of recommendations. Once again, it's OK if they qualify out.

The third "D" is exciting - it's the Design Meeting.

Now your team has worked together to design the perfect plan and is ready to unveil it to the prospective client. If you've executed the sales process effectively, the recommended plan is a perfect fit and the prospect signs on. The secret to getting a win is the "co-creation." All along the way, your team should have been working with the client to develop the plan, and since they had an active hand in it, it's a perfect fit 80% of the time. Once the paperwork is done and their start date has been determined, you can schedule the fourth "D", Delivery. The delivery of the services they contracted for begins. Thirty days after the kick-off meeting, the fifth and final "D" kicks in - the Display. That's when we ask clients for recommendations and referrals and they display their excitement with the program - and also help us find additional, like-minded clients. Inbound marketing requires new thinking about how you generate leads. Having a sales strategy like the 5 D's also requires changing the way you think about closing those leads. Without a strong sales process and strategy, it's hard to maximize your investment in inbound marketing