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5 Reasons Sales Should Be Excited About Marketing Automation - Marketing Action Blog - Act-On | Digital-News on Scoop.it today | Scoop.it

From blog.act-on.com - August 7, 2014 12:05 PM

Digest...

When we talk to sales reps at Top Performing companies, here’s what we generally hear about the benefits of marketing automation in the context of sales:

1. Accountability for marketing performance.

Marketing can take ownership of generating a sufficient volume of leads that actually meet sales qualification expectations. That means the entire lead lifecycle – from inquiry to customer – can be measured and tracked. Over time, organizations can benchmark conversion in each stage, including estimating the number of qualified leads marketing needs to source and how much it costs to drive that volume based on expected revenue targets.

2. Reps have more reasons to reach out and engage prospects.

CRM-marketing automation integration turns CRM into a strategic source of insight for reps who become more likely to log in and use their CRM the way it was intended to be used. Naturally, this means marketing automation can also increase CRM adoption among sales reps.

3. Sales doesn’t have to qualify as many leads.

For Top Performing organizations that use marketing automation, lead qualification happens in marketing and opportunity qualification happens in sales.

4. Best practices in sales become scalable.

Marketing automation makes targeting buyers scalable because you can set up campaigns to run on autopilot. New prospects enter the correct nurturing campaigns automatically, receiving the right message at the right time, whether you have one or one thousand prospects in the pipeline.

5. Marketing automation helps reps stay in touch with prospects that aren’t ready to buy.

Marketing automation allows reps to actively monitor leads they have engaged, including flagging their activity and alerting reps of buying signals. Nurturing a prospect who has already engaged with sales requires entirely different messaging than nurturing a prospect who was just introduced to your brand. Marketers can set up campaigns into which sales reps can drop contact records in order to keep in touch with them over time. If and when a prospect engages with one of those campaigns, the rep can reach out and re-engage at just the right time.

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Via Marteq

From blogs.gartner.com - October 9, 2013 1:36 PM

Digest...

... how we execute inbound marketing and respond to the inquiries must improve. Here are some steps to take:

1. Revisit your definition of a buying cycle start – A buying cycle should be considered as starting when a buyer expresses a willingness to spend money to achieve a goal or resolve a problem. With this new definition, the concept that buying cycles are 50 to 70% complete before contacting a seller may change.

2. Make sure you have the right mix of content – In order to create that willingness to spend, some of your content needs to be outcome oriented. But the big gap continues to be a failure to focus on business outcomes.

3. Treat inbound contacts with respect (remember they don’t trust sellers) – While the inbound contacts you generate may not be decision makers, they certainly are knowledgeable buyers.

Allow the buyer to tell you what they believe their requirements are.

--> Try to uncover the business issues that will provide value to offset the cost of the offering being considered.

--> Once a goal is uncovered, ask the buyer what capabilities they’ve seen that will enable the goal to be achieved.

--> Diagnose the way the buyer’s organization operates without the offering being considered and by asking questions see if you can determine additional capabilities they buyer was unaware of.

--> By asking questions, see if you can get agreement that additional capabilities would be helpful.

--> Try to qualify the buyer as a coach or champion to gain access to other stakeholders to build a business case.

4. Develop 4 key skills in your sellers. Take a hard look at your sales organization and make sure they can do the following three things (or train them to do so in your sales enablement efforts) that John feels are critical selling skills in today’s technology market. Sellers needs to have the ability to”

--> Disqualify “opportunities” that are likely to be lost to competitors or no decision. Few things are more painful than going the distance and losing.

--> Align with inbound buyers that have already done research and believe they know their requirements. Understand it will be necessary to gain access to others within their organization.

--> Have proactive conversations with executives about business outcomes without mentioning product.

--> Collaborate with buyers to understand the steps that must be taken for them to make a buying decision and define the activities that the selling organization will do to help them get there.

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Via Marteq

Marteq's curator insight, October 8, 2013 10:28 PM

This is a very, very important post for the content marketing who is configuring the marketing automation schema, especially the point regarding the right mix of content.

James Naro's curator insight, October 9, 2013 11:00 AM

As technology advances, it is still important to distinguish between marketing qualified leads and a sales qualified leads and align your messaging and selling bahavior accordingly.

5 Reasons Sales Should Be Excited About Marketing Automation - Marketing Action Blog - Act-On

Avoiding a Costly Inbound Marketing Trap - Gartner | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert