Today’s marketer is operating in a time like never before. Marketing teams are becoming an increasingly important factor in the success of an organization and, as a result, C-level executives are demanding greater accountability and visibility into their marketing spends.
Most organizations rely on a number of technology tools to help them connect with new and existing prospects in order to ultimately help the sales team close sales. One of the most popular tools marketers rely on is a CRM platform.
A recent study released by Bizo, titled “The Data Driven Marketer”, reports a growing reliance on data and analytics by marketers. Additionally, the study found that 67 percent of respondents use CRM regularly. Furthermore, the study reports that 90 percent of marketers at large companies have CRM systems installed.
Unfortunately, simply having a system like the ever-popular Salesfoce.com installed is not enough to accomplish goals. For many marketers, however, this is about as far as CRM execution ever gets. The sad facts of CRM underutilization are presented in a study published by Corporate Visions. Out of the 800 respondents polled, 87 percent said they were required by their company to use CRM. However, 79 percent said that they simply “check the boxes” when it comes to using their system.
It’s not surprising to hear that marketers are merely “checking boxes” with Salesforce.com when they have little to no visibility into the final result of their hard work once the leads are generated, nurtured, and then passed along to the sales team as a natural part of the closing process.
In many other cases, marketing departments and sales departments find themselves using disparate tools to accomplish their goals, but often, the two technologies do not communicate with one another. Jessica DeCianno, Senior Director of Marketing at CrowdStrike knows this struggle all too well.
“Crowdstrike’s marketing team uses Marketo and the sales team has implemented Salesforce. We have just started to more closely integrate these two platforms because we know there’s a lot more functionality we can harness to deliver more value and return for the business.”
As organizations continue to increase investments in content creation, social media, search and digital communications for lead generation and nurturing, marketers are seeking new approaches to motivate sales teams to take action. One of those approaches in particular holds exciting potential for marketers seeking to increase the visibility and accountability once leads are passed along.
The Strategic Lead Management CRM solution, developed and offered by Strategic Communications Group, in partnership with Rainmaker Associates, leverages the functionality of Salesforce.com to develop a custom and comprehensive lead flow process, combined with a dashboard for tracking and reporting.
The Salesforce.com-based solution enables marketers to receive alerts on how quickly leads are followed up on by the sales team; gain real-time visibility into the performance and ROI of web, content, search, digital, and social media programs; as well as display key statistics in a custom lead optimization dashboard.
“It is a challenging environment for marketers who must move quickly to embrace and adopt new tactics and technologies, while collaborating with sales to ensure timely follow-up on prospects,” said Marc Hausman, President and CEO at Strategic.“By partnering with Rainmaker, we developed a customized methodology and dashboard in Salesforce.com to help marketers measure how their programs directly impact sales pipeline and revenue.”
Senior-level marketers like CrowdStrike’s DeCianno agree.“We need to make sure we’re taking advantage of our system’s functionality and ensuring that the sales team knows that the leads in front of them in Salesforce are high-value will motivate them to act.”
“For us, it’s all about helping our clients derive the most value and return possible from their investment in CRM,” said John Sisson, Managing Partner at Rainmaker.
Visit Strategic to learn more about the new Strategic Lead Management CRM solution, or contact Strategic Communications Group.
Want to discover the best practices employed by organizations like yours to derive greater value from CRM, marketing automation and other technologies? Join us on Tuesday, September 30 at 3:00pm for Web2Sales: How Marketers Can Inspire Sales Team Action and Accountability. Hosted by Strategic founder and CEO, Marc Hausman, and featuring John Sisson, Managing Partner at Rainmaker Associates, you will learn more about the features and functionality of the Strategic Lead Management CRM solution.
