One of the key problems we see when we work with our clients initially is the building of barriers between departments, particularly marketing and sales.
Sometimes, these two teams, that should be working closely together, have their own processes and data silos that prevent the smooth flow from taking a lead to become a prospect and, ultimately, a client.
While senior leadership and internal structures play a significant part in that, often the integration technology the business lacks doesn’t help.
Let’s start by looking at two key pieces of technology that most relationship-makers have in their arsenal, marketing automation and CRM.
By marketing automation, we’re referring to the process of taking contact information about a possible lead and nurturing it to the point where it is a qualified sales opportunity that can then be passed to the sales team to develop and close.
The need to nurture
Today, potential clients take longer to warm up. For Professional Services companies, in particular, their target markets are businesses that may already have an existing supplier, under contract.
There’s a fine path to tread: contact too late and the potential client has been renewed by their existing supplier. Too early and the prospect is not in the right frame of mind to countenance a proposal.
Being front of mind when they are ready to review their arrangements is paramount.
If you’re not in the frame, you’re not in the game.
Nurturing leads throughout their renewal cycle means that marketing teams can keep prospects warm, offering value and demonstrating their expertise before the time of due consideration.
As recipients react and engage with emails (opening, clicking through, even unsubscribing) these actions can be tracked to give an indication of how they feel, and what they may be interested in.
Mailchimp allows the marketing team to automatically set sequences of events and actions based on this interaction and reduce the workflow of the team members themselves while collecting the data.
All of this is useful information and marketing teams can congratulate themselves on excellent creative, smart sequences and OR/CTR stats.
But that only tells half the story, and only serves half of the sales and marketing function. Without this data being pushed to the sales team, the momentum becomes somewhat lost.
In days gone by, the salesperson would have his or her ‘little black book’ of contacts and call them, possibly noting the outcomes and next actions. Today, CRM systems, such as Copper, have replaced that black book and sophisticated solutions allow the salesperson to track conversations and meetings with their prospect, manage the sales pipeline and analyse the performance of themselves, their accounts, their teams and the wider business.
Most businesses understand the importance of CRM in growing a successful operation. Sadly, though, fewer haven’t realized the potential of combining these two data elements together.
So what are the benefits of integrating Copper CRM and Mailchimp?
The Flying Start for Sales
Working with marketing and sales data is like running the relay race at the Olympics. Remember the 4×100 metres relay? The runner on the next leg starts running before the baton is handed over from the incoming team mate so that optimum speed is maintained.
We’ve all seen it when they get it wrong and the next leg runner isn’t ready – the baton is waved all over the place. Without a good handover of the data from marketing, the salesperson starts from a standing position while the marketing team is running at them at full speed.
Get the changeover right on time and you’re flying – no time lost, your sales team is running with the sales opportunity with momentum.
Providing the Sales team with great intelligence
Surfacing the right qualified leads from marketing to the sales team is the starting point.
Then, giving the sales team a heads up on what a prospect has reacted well to, who are the most avid openers of emails and so on allows the salesperson to make a call on what to talk to the lead about.
If marketing has used Mailchimp’s Survey feature to ask specific questions of interest, these can be used to form the basis of the initial conversation, taking a shorter route to asking the pertinent questions about the challenges the lead faces and how the business can help them.
Personalized content, relevant communication
There should be no guesswork involved in the communication that the salesperson has with the opportunity.
Any conversation, whether email, phone call or meeting, can be based on specific needs. Fact finding and initial ‘discovery’ routines can be minimized and the sales cycle shortened.
That’s a win for both parties.
Reporting from the top of the funnel to the bottom and back up
Marketing and sales teams both have their own suite of reports, dashboards and metrics to prove their value to senior stakeholders.
Imagine the compound effect of being able to report on the entire client journey, from outreach through nurture to close (win or lose).
What are the most effective campaigns that close the highest value deals? How many meetings did it take to win a deal, when the sales team were opening with personalized information already gained from the Mailchimp automated campaign?
Ultimately, both sales and marketing teams are working towards the same overall objectives.
Applying a robust sync technology to bridge the gap between the two means you won’t be dropping batons and should lead you to a gold-medal standard performance for your business.
Where do you go from here?
It’s all theory until the point when you can see it in action.
Copper and three60.io are looking for users to beta test the new native MailChimp app.
To register, click here.