Sales and marketing misalignment is nothing new - but a range of modern tech is helping to close that age-old gap and transform businesses.
One look at Seismic’s latest annual Salesforce Spotlight survey highlights the misalignment issue. The survey, conducted during Dreamforce 2015, revealed:
Over 50% of respondents thought their companies’ sales and marketing teams did not work well together, or only worked “somewhat well” together.
Lean Data’s latest survey offers more of the same:
- 51% of marketers said they are not satisfied with the level of communication between the teams
- 65% of salespeople rated the overall quality of leads they receive as average, poor or terrible
- 68% of marketers said that up to half of their leads are either ignored or disqualified by sales
Modern technology has rapidly altered the way we do business. In an increasingly mobile-driven, dispersed work environment, the sales and marketing disconnect has the worrying potential to grow. Ironically, it’s the same technology that has the power to reconnect these vital departments - and alignment really does mean better business: Aberdeen’s latest knowledge brief reveals just how advantageous an aligned force is for ABM success, and Marketo found that companies with an aligned strategy are 67% better at closing deals and generate 208% more revenue from marketing. So how can technology help sales and marketing work together to maximise revenue potential?
It’s all too easy for sales and marketing to disengage through:
- A lack of communication
- A lack of shared resources
- A lack of visibility into the workflow of each team at any given time
- A lack of knowledge sharing and communication
The right tech can help address all of these issues.
Information sharing
According to IDC, 65% of sales reps say they can’t find content to send to prospects, representing the most common complaint cited by sales teams.
A range of tools can make it easier for your teams to share up-to-the-minute knowledge and resources, including:
- Cloud storage and cloud platforms
- Internal search engines
- Company Wiki
- Internal social networks
- Collaboration and project management solutions, like Slack, JIRA, SharePoint and Google Drive
The faster you can reach a prospect, the more likely you are to convert. It’s essential that sales has instant access to the latest high quality marketing content. Cut down on the amount of time both teams waste in having to search for documents, case studies and internal info. Everyone benefits when you implement the right technology to give them instant access to the information they need.
Integrated CRM and marketing automation platforms
CRM, marketing automation, email marketing and social media management systems have all contributed to real progress in both sales and marketing departments, making life easier. But each of these tools was initially designed with one particular team or department in mind. With sales living in the CRM system and marketing living in the marketing automation realm, it can be easy for teams to disconnect and suffer tunnel vision.
Bringing together your CRM and marketing software can help your business coordinate and align sales and marketing activities. Today’s best platforms are designed to keep everyone in the loop, giving sales reps and marketers access to the same data. From social monitoring to sending prospecting emails based upon territory, you might be surprised at just how many tasks one tool can achieve. Integration-friendly tools like Infinity make it easy to access even greater shared power too.
Bots - let them do the hard work
Increasingly sophisticated automation tools are emerging that can bridge the communication gap between sales and marketing without adding work to their plates. Bots are basically lightweight programs that connect to apps or websites to perform tasks on a user’s behalf. So instead of signing into Twitter to collect and share recent tweets, searching the web for the latest competitive news to send to sales, and logging into loads of apps to collate a report for the sales team, a bot can take care of it. From pushing regular notifications and updates to selected people or teams, to sending tailored communications to every single one of your leads, bots can accomplish valuable work on behalf of both sales and marketing.
Analytics - get rid of the guesswork
What use is a marketing campaign if you can’t monitor how effective - or ineffective - it’s been? From the start of a campaign right through to closing a sale, every point along the buyer’s journey can now be monitored, every interaction with your campaign, be it online or via phone, can be tracked. This data is valuable, but only when it’s accessible and presented in a way that both sales and marketing can benefit from.
With sales becoming more data-driven, sales executives can’t afford to be hampered by limited visibility into data or scattered information. The right sales technology collects and analyzes relevant data to quickly inform decision making and reveal opportunities for improvement. The dashboard in tools like Infinity’s give sales leaders the ability to visualise trends and gain valuable insights , as well as giving marketers instant insight into campaign performance.
Call tracking
Cloud services like Infinity’s put a solid framework in place for measuring the strength of leads. It means that both departments have easy access to detailed analysis of every user’s interaction with your site, including the phone call. It provides , page views, what they searched for and more. Monitoring call data over the course of marketing campaigns, gives added insights and enables you to measure the success of campaigns.
Integrate this with 3rd party platforms and you have a detailed analysis of interactions across multiple digital touchpoints, giving you a full picture of those seeking information on your product or service. Send call data directly to Google Analytics, and sync up with your CRM and other platforms to join up sales and marketing insights. .
When sales and marketing have all this information so readily available at their fingertips, in real-time, lead tracking is simple. Software like Infinity’s can answer the kind of detailed questions that are really beneficial to your sales and marketing departments, such as:
- What has generated a phone call to you – giving you real-time insights into your callers behaviour.
- What content have prospects viewed on your website?
- Have they engaged with your social media?
- Have they downloaded any info or white papers, viewed any videos or attended any webinars?
It makes things much easier for sales to make that all important first contact, and for marketing to create more impactful, targeted content.
