With the name “marketing automation,” it’s not surprising that sales teams are confused about using this platform. As a member of the sales team, you have probably already asked the marketing team: “Hi, how does this concern me?” and the answer is always, “everything”. Marketing automation supports your prospects’ buying cycle while ensuring that the sales team has access to qualified leads. Helping the sales team is marketers’ number one job, and marketing automation allows them to do it more efficiently.
Sales & marketing automation = even more leads
According to Regalix’s 2016 report, 86% of marketers who use a marketing automation solution say that the biggest benefit was improving lead management and nurturing. Half say that marketing automation enabled alignment between sales and marketing teams. Those are very good results!
Here are 4 ways salespeople can reap the benefits of marketing automation:
1- Get the right leads
Salespeople become frustrated when they spend hours sending emails or making calls (cold calling) to prospects who will never buy. Imagine the scenario: one of your best salespeople makes 5 different calls in the morning to cold prospects. After lengthy conversations, they have all failed. Despite all the goodwill in the world and their desire to do well, they begin to lose confidence and panic. And then, finally, the right person is on the line, is interested in your company, and is ready to make a decision. But your salesperson is now tired and frustrated from their morning from hell. They botch their sales presentation and lose the sale. Even if this story is purely hypothetical, it happens far too often. The lead scoring feature, combined with marketing automation software, helps prevent this situation by allowing marketers to eliminate unnecessary calls (cold calling) and pass only the most promising leads to salespeople. As a result, salespeople can stay focused, efficient … and, not to mention, marketing automation can save valuable time.
2- Keep leads close to you
We say it often and once again: many leads are not ready to buy when they first come to your site.
In fact, most of them are not. But you do not want to lose a sale just because the timing is wrong. Marketing automation allows you to do lead nurturing so that you can build a relationship with your prospects over a defined period and come back when your lead is perceived as warm. If you see a lead passed from marketing to you and you do not feel they are ready yet, do not hesitate to send them back to marketing to include them in a nurturing campaign until they are ready. When they come back, they will then be more engaged with your company and you will have just what you need to close the sale.
3- Measure your activity in real time
Okay, so it is called marketing automation, but that does not mean salespeople cannot use it as well. Most marketing automation platforms, like Webmecanik, have CRM integrations, which would make your sales team even happier. This synchronization automatically highlights the best leads and sales opportunities to pay attention to, relieves them of that famous cat-and-mouse game with the prospect, and helps them sign more contracts in less time. Incredible, isn’t it? Marketing automation also allows you to track prospects’ behavior, analyze their level of interest in your company, and then move them through marketing action scenarios such as sending emails. As a result, your salespeople will have more time for useful things: spending less time making unnecessary calls and more time getting in touch with warm prospects interested in signing a contract.
4- Continuously improve
You have certainly already heard the rumors that marketing automation allows marketing teams to better demonstrate the return on investment of their campaigns. Once again, you must be thinking “yes, but how does this concern me?”. You know the answer.
When marketing is able to effectively measure everything it does, the team can then directly see what worked and what did not. Marketing automation helps marketing teams ask for budget for their projects because they can then prove when a campaign worked. If a campaign did not have the desired success, marketers can easily know why and avoid making the same mistake next time. Which means they can improve their campaigns every time to make them more and more effective. An effective campaign means that it generates more qualified leads, better nurturing, and ultimately better sales conversions for you. Do you see how it works?
Despite the confusing name, marketing automation is not only for marketing teams; it is also a useful tool for sales teams.
