It is common knowledge that the relationship between sales and marketing teams are complex and we can often see them at odds with each other. The core teams of any company are constantly competing to prove which department is more valuable for the company. Obviously, both of these units are vital, as marketing is responsible for generating as many high-quality leads as possible. Once qualified, it is the sales department’s job to transform these prospects into buying customers. However, the cruel truth is that the sales department ignores half of the marketing leads and 79% of those that do get to pass on never turn into sales. What could have caused such poor performance and how can one fix this problem?
Obviously, it could have been easily avoided if the majority of sales and marketing departments did not experience a lack of communication and if those teams were tightly aligned. The cooperation between two of the most important teams in any company is paramount for your business’ success. Implementation of a top-notch automation solution can actually establish a cooperative environment, adjust the key business processes and, as a result, significantly increase your revenue. Companies that managed to establish a cooperative environment between their core teams managed to generate 208% more revenue from marketing, which turned out to be another unexpected benefit.
Sales and marketing automation improves prospecting
Statistically, 50% of sales time is lost to unproductive prospecting. Your sales reps could have managed their time more effectively if they had a powerful contact management tool at their disposal. For example, www.bpmonline.com provides your team with a complete view of their prospects. Obviously, tracking the basic customer information will not be enough to establish a strong connection with your customers. You will have to amass much more valuable data if you want to have a better understanding of who your target audience actually is. Effective automation solution applies to various tracking indicators to collect additional information that includes, but is not limited to, business scale and industry, geography, notable events, the history of a contact’s career path etc. Moreover, you can take your prospecting to a whole new level of efficiency if the software is equipped with social media tools. That way, you can enrich your contacts’ profiles with valuable data that is extracted from social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Bpm’online, for instance, is quite proficient at aggregating the necessary information from various sources.
Tracking anonymous online buyers made simple
Your marketers have to be equipped with outstanding website behavior tracking tools if they want to have a better understanding of who their potential customers are. From the initial visit to a website, the browser collects various information: the specific pages the person visited, how much time they had spent there, their location, time of visit etc. If your marketer is capable of providing enough relevant and engaging content, the visitors will definitely fill out one of your online forms and provide their names and emails for your marketing team. Your marketing team will need a marketing automation system in order to process these vast volumes of data. In addition, they will be able to analyze the best performing lead generation channels. That way, you will be able to concentrate on the most efficient sources. This insight should not be overlooked, considering that 85% of B2B marketing reps who use a marketing automation platform say that they do not even use it to its full potential.
Communication without borders
Obviously, lack of communication is one of the biggest obstacles for the sales and marketing alignment. Often, these teams do not have a clear understanding of what a qualified lead is, taking into account that the majority of marketing produced leads never convert into sales. The best way for your marketing and sales units to find a common ground is to maintain a constant dialog with each other. For example, bpm’online has developed an Enterprise Social Network (ESN) to untangle this knotty situation. Essentially, ESN is a communication platform with the look and feel of your favorite social network that motivates colleagues to share actionable data. Your reps can review the latest updates on the progress of their sales activities. ESN users from various business units can discuss the productivity of their tactics etc. Not to mention that they can “like” or comment on the posts of their colleagues, thus increasing employee engagement and productivity.
Marketing automation helps your marketer’s amp up their lead generation game, while sales force automation makes your salespeople more productive. However, the seamless integration of sales and marketing automation on a single platform is what makes individual employees work as a real, synced team. The companies that recognize the importance of such alignment enjoyed a 36% higher customer retention rate and 38% higher sales win rate. Moreover, according to the studies, when these teams are in sync, companies become 67% better at closing deals.
