How can Marketers help Sales in this Economy? 
Category:  Knowledge Base 
Group:  Industry Trends 

What is the gap between marketing and sales?

The gap between Marketing departments and Sales Teams still exists. Many marketers develop and deploy campaigns without really caring about the sales results. Their main concern is that there are a large number of “clicks” or leads generated (quantity not quality). The focus of sales department is different. They look at how many of those leads can be closed and how much money can be generated (quality not quantity).

Buyers behavior has changed radically

The truth is that many organizations are finding it more and more difficult to distinguish a good qualified lead from a bad lead. Buyers today are using the Internet to review products and sales prices. They use interactive blogs and social networks to educate themselves. The role of glossy marketing brochures with flashy slogans is reduced to boost egos of management, not convincing consumers. They careful compare brands and specifications using many different sources.

Bottom-line: buyers are gathering more and more information early on before they are ready to be directly contacted or even make a purchase.

Traditional linear marketing is dead

Using traditional marketing and sales processes, the leads that arrive in the sales department may be no closer to being a “sales qualified lead” than lead that was only for asking for information. This leads to low-quality CRM databases and bad data. This in turn also means that the sales conversion rates are lower and valuable time wasted on un-qualified leads.

It is very clear that Marketers must change their tactics to help increase revenues. Marketers need to become more involved in the qualification of a lead before it is handed over to the sales department. This is not an easy thing to do, but if a marketer has the right tools, he or she can close the gap!

How does innovative marketing look like?

Marketers need to create a new self-understanding, implement new processes for themselves. They need to bridge the gap between quantity and quality to be of value in this new market. This means to determine what a qualified lead should look like in each stage of the qualification and nurturing process, organize campaign strategies, and determine how they can track results in real-time.

What do strategies look like in this new market? They are all but linear. In fact they may consist of many different tools such as emails, tradeshows, social media, blogs, surveys, call center etc Questionnaires are becoming very helpful in understanding buyers better. Careful considerations must be taken to ensure that the information collected is tracked, scored and processed efficiently. Marketers may produce smaller lead lists to sales departments, but the difference would be the majority of those leads would be “sales qualified leads”.

And where are the resources?

This may all sound overwhelming for B2C and B2B alike. Marketers’ can now take advantage of a new concept call “Marketing Automation”. The objective is to automate repeated routine task in marketing, which in turn provides sales departments with more qualified leads, better metrics, and gives the ability for sales teams to engage with the right prospects with more knowledge than before.

Let us stop one possible misconception right away: this is not about a new and magic technology that miraculously turns marketing campaigns into an infinite lead generation engine! Successful companies approach this by changing their way of thinking first. Only then technologies become critical get things done, but it takes knowledge and creative thinkers to break the mold first.

In this day and age, organizations are trying to increase revenues without spending more marketing dollars. Marketing automation makes this possible, transforming marketing into a nimble powerhouse again.
The benefits will be higher customer satisfaction, lower cost of sales and mores revenues!

And who wouldn’t like these results?!!

Interested in more information? Go here

(Publish Dt) 08/18/2011
Buzz: demand generation,Buyers behavior,social networks,sales qualified lead,Marketing Automation

Industry:   Unspecified  ,   Educational Services  ,   Manufacturing  ,   Goverment  ,   Financial Services  ,   Technology  ,   Consulting  ,   Healthcare  ,   Internet  ,   Marketing Agency  ,   PR Agency 
Focus & Interests:   Unspecified  ,   Cost Savings  ,   Efficiency Management  ,   Consolidation  ,   Increase Sales  ,   Customer Loyalty  ,   Process Automation  ,   Lead Management  ,   Reduce Cost of Sales  ,   Web 2.0 Strategies  ,   Web 2.0 Communities  ,   Channel Management  ,   Reporting & BI  ,   Forecasting  ,   Sales Innovation  ,   Viral Marketing  ,   Campaigning  ,   Website Innovation  ,   System Integration  ,   eCommerce  ,   Demand Generation  ,   Portals  ,   Education / Learning  ,   Event Management  ,   Cloud Computing