With the meteoric rise of the marketing industry and its exponential annual growth rate, there are new expansion opportunities on the horizon; with new opportunities come better, well-founded strategies, some of which tend to become an inevitable and concrete cycle that every organization eventually adapts. Lead generation – something that is considered essential today by a huge part of the sales and marketing workforce – was “the next big thing” back in 2014, despite having been around always.
In 2021, the next “next big thing” is marketing qualified meetings. Before trying to understand why it is important to ask the right question: what is an MQM?
What Is A Qualification?
In general, a qualification is a condition that must be met – akin to an official requirement, at times. Contextually, a qualification in the sales and marketing industry is a verification that the chances of acquiring a particular lead as a client are much higher than usual. This is called a qualified lead, and when the marketing team pursues such procedures, the entire process is termed as Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) generation.
You can read more about how acquiring qualified leads and meetings can lead to a better ROI here.
The Lead Qualification Classification Flowchart (MQL, SQL)
Sales Qualification versus Marketing Qualification:
Now that you know what qualification means in the sales and marketing industry, it is important to understand the difference between marketing qualification and sales qualification.
A major distinguishing feature between both kinds of qualification is that while marketing qualification is often taken up by the marketing department or sector of an organization, the sales department is in charge of sales qualification. Very often, marketing qualification takes place before sales qualification, to increase the chances of visitor-to-customer conversion, often termed as “lead conversion”. Hence, lead qualification (by either team) is often preferred to increase the chances of lead conversion.
What Is A Marketing Qualified Meeting (MQM)?
Marketing qualified meetings are sessions planned and held by the marketing department (often before the sales pitch) to educate, engage, and convince potential buyers to proceed forward with the purchasing process, thereby increasing the chances of making the sale. Such sessions often include demonstrations and assessments of products and services and the various aspects associated with what the company is offering.
To develop your sales pipeline in this pandemic situation, MQM is the way to go. With no way to safely organize physical demand generation campaigns such as exhibitions and expert panel sessions, marketing-qualified meetings bring the company and the lead just a little bit closer; making that sale has never been any easier, as MQM brings you that much closer to closing it.
You can understand the fundamental differences between MQL and MQM here.
Why Should You Prefer MQM?
In the gauntlet of lead-to-client conversions, only one percent of visitors make it all the way through to becoming a customer for an organization on average. Despite lead generation and qualification, the rate of lead conversion seems poor. Potential prospects are not just numbers anymore – they expect to be treated as customers, with genuine engagement and authentic responses to their negotiations. Building trust has become a huge part of marketing qualification, and MQM is the way to do that.
Another aspect of marketing qualified meetings involves observing the lead’s response to the company and vice versa. Thanks to the one-on-one nature of these meetings, it is often easier for both parties to understand how the other works, and how their interactions can help benefit each other mutually. Because of this, it has become easier than ever to parameterize MQM as a part of the key performance indicators (or KPI) of your organization’s marketing department.
Call FunnL today to enquire about and book a personalized MQM for your organization. FunnL is the world’s leading provider of SQM and MQM as a B2B service; with a team of highly skilled professionals and over twenty-five thousand meetings in their portfolio, FunnL is all you need to improve your lead conversion rates – no matter what industry you hail from.
