Complete Automation - Not Just Marketing Automation

With the empowered buyer calling the shots today, companies realize that the role of sales and marketing teams have changed. It is no longer about selling...it is all about adding real value to customers by building a good relationship with them, becoming their trusted advisor and ally and helping them make a sound purchase decision.

This calls for a sales team that is:

• Proactive and can keep “in step” with each prospect
• Independent and has the ability to be immediately responsive on its own.
• Able to reach out to prospects with relevant messaging at the right time

However, in the face of stiff competition and declining profit margins, companies cannot afford to scale up marketing or incur any significant cost increases.

All of the above call for automation. However, companies that solely deploy marketing automation find out later that it isn’t really sufficient. Somehow, the numbers don’t seem to add up. There’s still a significant gap between the in-flow of leads and closure. This problem stems from the fact that marketing automation alone is not enough anymore. With the power-shift, the lines between sales and marketing have blurred and this makes it imperative that companies fully empower their sales teams, allowing them to be independent of marketing. Hence, the need for automation on both fronts--marketing and sales.

The complete solution...Marketing + Sales automation

The complete solution involves automating both marketing and sales in the following areas:

Assets

Give Sales the power to create personalized sales collateral while marketing still retains control over major branding elements. Enable asset storage and tracking so that both sales and marketing have the ability to access the assets and review their performance at anytime.

Knowledge

Provide your sales and marketing teams with knowledge about the buyer. Only when your sales and marketing teams have complete information about their prospects--their behavior and attributes--and are aware of their exact position in sales cycle, can they add value to them.

Tools

As a part of the automation process, it is essential to provide your sales and marketing teams with the right set of tools. Often, the success of marketing and sales enablement efforts depends on how well these tools work. Some key tools include

• Lead scoring and segmentation tools that classify the leads into different sections based on their interest levels and sales-cycle position. This enables salespeople and marketers to focus on the most important leads and also direct the most appropriate marketing/sales techniques towards each different lead category

• Lead nurturing tools which allow marketing and sales teams to stay in touch with prospects at different stages of the sales cycle so that no leads slip out of the sales funnel just because they are not ready to buy immediately

• Personalization tools that enable sales and marketing teams to engage in a personalized, one-to-one communication with leads and gain their trust

• Playbooks that provide all the information your sales team needs when connecting with a prospect. Playbooks can save as much as 7 hours a week for your salespeople.

• CRM Integration of your sales and marketing automation platforms with the CRM software ensures your sales team has the latest data on what’s going on with their leads and the sales pipeline, irrespective of whether it’s their CRM or the automation platform they are looking at

• Cloud-based/Mobile application and alert generation tools that generate timely alerts on key prospect behavior and enable marketing and sales to stay in touch with their prospects through any internet-enabled mobile device, letting them  take the right action at the right time

• Social media automation ensures your company’s social engagement efforts are consistent and helps you get results through automated, scheduled, planned updates

• Measurement tools that monitor and measure every marketing/sales campaign so you know which programs are most effective and which ones should be modified in future

The result, when marketing automation and sales enablement come together, is a company where marketing and sales teams are always cued into prospect activities, know clearly which leads they should be investing their efforts on and have access to every asset they need to build that strong personal relationship with prospect.