We all know that customers and
prospects are more in control of the buying conversation. Not that long ago,
sales were almost exclusive achieved by us looking for strong sales
hunters.
Voice mail barriers, more informed
buyers, and less time on everyone’s part has dramatically changed the sale
process. In addition, sale reps are
expensive. If we are honest with ourselves we know them to be poor
prospectors.
So now we are asking ourselves,
“How can prospects find us better, and how do we engage them, qualify them and then
move them into our sales reps’ “line of sight”?
Marketing has evolved to how do we
effectively use technology to nurture prospects and maintain a strong relationship
with customers, especially, in an economy, where many of us have found it
necessary to expand our focus nationally, if not globally.
The promise of CRM is found in the
name - Relationship Management. Yet few
of us are in love with the results we have achieved from our CRM systems.
I believe this lack of excitement
with CRM, if not the out-right failure of CRM can, in part, be attributed to
two missing components:
First – marketing has
not stepped up to the plate and taken charge of CRM -- has not
taken the responsibility for CRM away from IT and/or sales.
After all, as
marketers we are responsible for lead generation and customer retention. Who else is better positioned to manage the
data? We should be the ones that are queuing
up the sales teams and monitoring their activities.
Second – Until now CRM
has not provided us with the complete suite for building relationships – that drip
/ nurture marketing process. We have had
to rely on individual tools, often not integrated with our CRM.
Those days are over! There is a new
product category - Marketing Automation.
I invite you to comment on what you
know about Marketing Automation. Are you
using it? What are your current
results?
If not using, are you considering
it? If so, why?
Just put your fingers to the keyboard and let us know so we can help
answer questions, concerns about how to effectively select a provider and use
Marketing Automation in your organization.