Marketing automation is perhaps one of the most brilliant marketing solutions out there. With marketers lining up to adopt automation more and more, a particular question is bothering me. Is marketing automation only for marketers? Is marketing automation as the name suggests, a solution only for the marketing department, fueled by the marketing budget?
A few features of the typical marketing automation tool ranges from attracting visitors and turning them into leads, to nurturing them until they are ready to be handed over to sales. Along the way, marketers can track leads on their journey in the sales funnel.
However, marketing automation is a versatile tool, and many people fail to realize that. It is as much as a sales tool for the sales department, as it is for marketing. Don’t believe us? Read on.
Why Marketing Automation is a Powerful Tool for Sales?
- As a prospect enters the sales funnel, you can track their movements from the start. With lead scoring you can assign them scores. Modern customers are self-reliant. They don’t want pesky sales-reps to call them up before they decide on buying. When you see a lead becoming sales ready, you can create email alerts for your sales reps. They can then place a call and strike the iron while it’s hot. Timing is the key, and marketing automation lets sales to get it right.
- When a lead becomes sales-ready, marketing hands it over to sales. Now, a sales rep will be assigned to the lead for follow up purposes. That sales-rep can access the prospect’s history, their behaviour including all insights and other such details. How? This is due to marketing automation’s CRM integration feature. This improves marketing-sales alignment as well. As a result sales can provide feedback regarding campaigns and you can tweak them accordingly in the future.
- One bottleneck that Sales used to face pre-marketing automation days is unready or under qualified leads. With marketing automation’s lead scoring module, Sales as well as Marketing knows exactly when a lead is qualifying or whether it needs more nurturing. The priority of each lead then becomes clear to sales and they can handle that accordingly.
- Marketing automation keeps track of every activity that a lead partakes in. Whether it is a pdf download or a landing page visit, it stores all the relevant information. So, sales-reps can go through that information to figure out what each prospect wants from their company. Since they will only get one chance to convince the prospect to buy your product, it is better to use this information to your advantage. Sales-reps can leverage this and create a meaningful relationship with the prospect who soon will become a recurring customer.
- Marketing automation helps automate a number of marketing and sales tasks. It gives both departments a lot of time which they can utilize to come up with better strategies, and hence result in a shorter sales cycle.
Have Organizations Realized the Power of Marketing Automation?
The answer to this is yes and no. Some realized this from the start. Some didn’t. Some of those who didn’t, learnt this on the way. So, the bigger picture is not as rosy as it sounds like. Most marketers who are adopting marketing automation now are not aware of the versatility of the tool. The scenario that ensues is that sales-reps have no access to insights nor have they received any training regarding this. Leads are lost as a result. There is a lack of information that renders sales-reps useless. They are unable to close deals because they have no idea of leveraging the information that a marketing automation tool gathers.
What can you do so that Sales can Start Reaping the Benefits?
As a marketer the first thing you should do is push the information that you have on every lead as notifications or email alerts. Suggest Sales what to do based on the context and also encourage them to start training their representatives. You have to be proactive about this and share every little nugget of information that you have on a certain lead. This will help sales understand better. As a result they can do the right thing and close the deal.
You have to understand that sales-reps are busy people. It is difficult for them to take out time and get used to a new system. So, it would be better if you initiated the solution so that both departments can work in harmony. There is so much to do with your marketing automation and Sales can benefit equally from it. You have to make sales understand that if they invest some time in extra training and reading marketing automation literature, they too can benefit from it.
