Once your process is laid out and both teams are in agreement, it’s time to put the technology in place that will enable your strategy. As noted in the example above, it is essential for marketing automation platforms to be natively integrated with the sales CRM.

Without this integration, it is difficult to create a consistent experience for your prospects and customers. And on top of that, too much time and too many resources will be drained trying to coordinate activities to ensure leads don’t fall through the cracks.

Companies can drive 5 to 36 percent of growth simply through alignment, according to SiriusDecisions, so integrating your platforms from day one without using third-party tools makes sense. From the first day of your MAP and CRM integration you can:

• automatically push leads to CRM and assign to sales at the right time;
• sync all activities between the two systems so sales can track each lead’s engagement;
• help prioritize outreach to create efficiency in the sales cycle;
  provide full visibility into each lead’s digital footprint so sales can customize conversations around interests;
• give sales influence over the buyer’s journey from inside the CRM—sales can add leads back to marketing campaigns from inside the CRM if they need further nurturing; and
• capture marketing’s impact on closed opportunities with built-in reporting.