Do you think Marketing Automation System is for marketing professionals only? If you believe so, then you are not alone. This article will burst the myth and point out how a Marketing Automation System is useful to sales professionals too! While marketing automation streamlines the lives of marketers, it also yields sales productivity.
Talking specifically of Inside Sales which is a lead generation channel, traditionally is an entity of marketing department itself. But, due to the tasks and systems used by them, there is often a drift noticed between marketers and inside sales team.
Although the ultimate goal of both departments is to ‘Generate Quality Lead’, the two end up disagreeing on multiple areas. Professionals from these departments would able to relate to this fact. Marketing Automation Solution can fill this void by helping to achieve integration between sales and marketing.
Here are 4 ways in which Marketing Automation ensures inside sales productivity:
1. Emphasis On the Right Leads
“61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.” –(MarketingSherpa)
Most Inside Sales reps have one perpetual complain against their marketing counterparts that they do not pass on leads that are verified and qualified. One of the many time wasters of an inside sales rep is contacting/following up with leads that are not appropriate for the product/service they are offering.
This is where Marketing Automation comes into play, with features like lead scoring and grading, leads can automatically be qualified based on prior set criteria. Marketing and sales have to work together to define what would be an ideal qualified lead by assigning a score to determine a prospect’s interest and a set a grade to find their fit. Thanks to Marketing Automation Solution, marketing and sales departments won’t pull each other’s hair out over qualified leads.
2. View prospect activities in real time
“Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.” -InsideSales.com
With the sales industry getting tougher by the day, it is important to have access to as much information as possible about the prospects/leads before contacting them. There is static information of the lead that is easily available, but with the competitive nature of inside sales industry, sales intelligence is a must. Marketing Automation helps a rep to do so by tracking activities of the lead such as prospects interaction with the marketing channels such as, page visits, downloads, emails sent, email actions etc. This information provides added intelligence needed by the sales rep to have more fruitful conversations and thereby having direct impact on the prospect.
Many leading Marketing Automation vendors also provide seamless integration with multiple CRM solutions available in the market. This enables information from Marketing Automation System to be synced with the CRM records and hence provide additional intelligence.
3. Lead Nurturing Assistance
“Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.” -The Annuitas Group
Lead Nurturing is known to be essential to sales process, but to simplify the lead nurturing process is what Marketing Automation helps. Marketing Automation Solutions foster sales productivity by implementation of multiple workflows to execute and manage various lead nurturing activities and in addition track them.
It assists by progressively feeding information to the leads enabling them to move forward in the sales funnel from one stage to another. Also, it prevents leads slipping off from the sales cycle, thereby increasing the conversion rate leading to a healthy sales pipeline.
Use Case:
Prior to implementing marketing automation, Wistia was bringing in a large number of leads using their 15-day free service trial for their web video hosting service. Unfortunately, there was little they could do to tailor messaging to the unique needs of their prospects once they were identified. Using marketing automation, Wistia was able to segment prospects and place them on targeted lead nurturing tracks, which sent follow-up emails at measured time intervals. Further customized emails were sent to prospects who stalled at different points during the trial process, encouraging them to complete the next step. Once a lead completed the trial workflow, they received a congratulatory email containing the personal phone number of a Wistia sales team member. If a lead’s trial expired, however, the lead was placed on a 3-month nurturing program where they would receive bi-weekly newsletters. In the end, Wistia was able to increase the number of free service trial leads by 40% and confirm this success via monthly ROI reports. – Salesforce Pardot.
4. Improved Lead Management
57% of B2B companies identify ‘converting qualified leads into paying customers’ as a top funnel priority. (MarketingSherpa)
Companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate. (CSO Insights)
With multiple channels that are employed for lead generation such as; PPC, SEM, Email Marketing, Landing Pages, Forms, etc. in place, it is literally a havoc to manage the data and leads with disparate systems (a nightmare for the marketing teams). With Marketing Automation in place all the data is centralized and leads can be assigned automatically based on the rules laid out which simplifies work flow for an inside sales/marketing professional. For global organizations with multiple sales and marketing teams it is indispensable to have a well-tuned lead management system in place, this has a direct impact on the shelf life of a lead.
Top-performing companies have been able to develop lead management efforts using marketing automation features like segmentation, drip marketing, and campaign personalization — making it possible to move the leads through the sales cycle with minimal investment in time or resources.
Source-B2C
But said so, Marketing Automation solutions are enablers, you still need to have:
- A trained inside sales team which will put the Marketing Automation Solutions features to good use.
- Robust lead management plan covering all stages of your funnel or the leads life cycle.
- All the content and collateral to enable your drip nurturing.
- Implementation and testing.
Thus, although in a limited manner, Marketing Automation Solution is valuable for sales professionals too!
