Last time I wrote about the challenges some marketing and sales teams are facing thanks to the digital age. Since then I’ve noted that as a response to these challengers many Marketing and Sales teams are aligning closer.
Successful organisations who have tried to align closer and go through this transition, have been recognised for starting to work differently, most moving towards a more customer centric organisation. In a customer centric model, usually marketing generally leads the customer service, sales and information technology departments through a process to bring a product or service to market in a collaborated way. A breakdown of traditional marketing approaches is needed for most organisations to provide an increase in revenue, shorten sales cycle, improve conversion rates and forecast accuracy. Not to mention improve overall customer or brand experience as the customer is now in charge. I believe that the sales and marketing relationship in most organisations need to come together more than ever to provide a robust solution for the customer, and in turn for the success of the marketing department.
Marketing’s role as part of this strengthening relationship has been to find new solutions outside the standard CRM systems to improve ROI which most have used in the past and instead look for applications that can assist their sales and customer service teams to share information together in real time to stay ahead of the conversation. Automated marketing has also become one of the new ways of thinking and a tool to service customers to ensure that the extra steps that need to occur do and are managed automatically instead of requiring human resources to specially in the form of scheduling social media posts and email responses. Organisations are finding that when Information Technology and Marketing departments are in close collaboration this helps build a more robust relationships with customers. Interestingly Information Technology has become the glue between the customer and a company delivering engagement. It's important now that messages are delivered quickly and appropriately to customers and most of the time today it isn’t done face to face, but instead via information technology.
Interestingly companies have found that when Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing departments are working close in collaboration both company revenue and social media mentions rise. As part of this relationship triad Marketing have a new area to lead and think about which is Marketing Content, which needs to directly engage and satisfy sales prospects and leads to the point that they purchase. I believe content marketing needs to be rich and real as customers can smell a marketing promotion from a mile away. As we know customers are so educated and therefore need content that will really add value. The Sales and Customer Service departments are the ones that can provide insights into useful and helpful content for marketing to use as they are talking to the customer every day and hopefully have their finger on the pulse when it comes to what the customer is wanting. This is another reason marketing a sales romance needs to be stronger than ever to ensure a great return on investment.
Blog post by: Karin Forster