Knowing what to implement in the marketing and sales process starts with analysis of the technologies we use. Employing new tools may appeal to upper management because they may appear valuable, however, they could, ultimately, turn out to be costly and ineffective.
Keeping a watchful eye on technology and understanding which solutions can reduce costs, increase benefits and streamline operations is critical if we want to succeed.
However, with new technologies, come bad habits. Let’s explore 3 solutions to common sales and marketing techniques that fail.
1. Stuck in your old ways
With this mentality come the worst habits. Marketing and sales organizations that resist change can ultimately do a lot of damage. Technology is constantly evolving, but many choose to stick to the same old tools. With the growth of social media, multichannel marketing and content marketing, it has become critical to change our internal processes, and those marketing and sales teams that don’t change with the technologies that have been implemented, make it more difficult to keep up with the competition. This is especially true for CMOs that need their teams to stay current and ahead.
2. Waiting too long
Sales enablement technology has a learning curve. Lagging behind in adoption could mean a more aggressive implementation at a later time in order to catch up with the competition. Playing the ‘wait-and-see’ game with automation tools makes sense if you are struggling with contributing to your goals. But don’t wait until it’s too late. The earlier you start with implementing enabling tools, the faster you will be ahead of the curve.
3. Looking at vanity metrics
It often happens that B2B marketers fall into the habit of looking at the wrong metrics; metrics that don’t enable them to see the big picture or don’t give them a clear view of how they are doing. Superficial metrics like page views and shares aren’t going to give us any insight into the customer journey and decision making process. (Source, Hubspot 2016)
Looking at data that supports how prospects are interacting with your brand and, in turn, influencing the decision making process means looking at metrics such as email opens and clicks and downloads of assets through gated forms.
4. Giving Sales Un-qualified Leads
Ask any sales team, and they will more often than not say that marketing’s biggest flaw is that they don’t pass on more qualified leads to sales. It often happens that marketers are too eager when it comes to new prospects. Without nurturing, they rush to contact prospects and send them off to sales (Source, Marketing Profs). As a result of this, sales reps often don’t follow up with these unseasoned leads, and they get pushed aside.
Marketing also has the problem of only focusing on the number of leads they have and how many page views their website has received. And as a result, they miss the nuances of lead-to-close conversion, and which content works to qualify a lead even further.
Sales enablement tools come with sales analytics software and this can help you escape the measurement funk. With analytics, marketing can have access to data like they’ve never had in the past. Sales enablement gives total visibility into the pipeline, so that marketing can work to pass off the most qualified leads to sales.
How effective is your sales process? Is marketing empowering you or keeping you behind? Perhaps it’s time to empower your marketing and sales teams with innovative technologies.
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