So your VP of sales selected a CRM system for the sales team
to work leads and opportunities. Great. You've also been told to
get on the product and start getting more quality leads to the
sales force. You've also probably heard that you now have all
the tools you need to complete your mission, which is to
increase the number of leads, send more quality leads to sales,
keep other leads in marketing until they are ready and, of
course, get an ROI on your marketing dollars now!
If you are feeling a bit overwhelmed and ill-equipped, you have
good reason. The reality is that, unfortunately, you have not
been given all the tools you need to succeed. CRM systems have
benefit within the sales realm, but to meet your particular
marketing objectives what you actually need is a good marketing
automation system that supports up-to-date marketing automation
processes.
Increasingly, organizations are discovering that what might have
worked in the past no longer can suffice. This is especially
true for marketing, as dynamics, such as the Internet, have
greatly changed prospects' buying behaviors. Think about it:
These days, your prospects are out researching what they need,
what is happening in the market and who offers what before they
are ready to buy. Most often, they are conducting research long
before they initially engage with your company. And many
prospects are coming through online mechanisms to find out what
you sell.
Importantly, these same elements put you in position to help
create demand, capture early leads that are not yet
"sales-ready," and take steps to nurture them until they are.
But too often, organizations continue to bypass these activities
in their haste to get leads to sales.
For example, what do you suppose would happen if a lead came in
through a form on your Web site? Let's say that someone signed
up to download a white paper, and it went straight to sales. My
estimation is that at least eight out of 10 times that lead is
simply doing research and is not ready to buy from your
organization. As well, would that same lead be turned off if a
salesperson called them trying to sell products or services?
Would you be wasting your resources having sales call on
unqualified leads? Would the sales team in turn be irritated and
less interested in following up on marketing-generated leads in
the future? I believe the answer to many of these questions is
yes.
On that note, marketing automation systems help marketers
accomplish a series of goals. They help them to identify leads,
to track, score and nurture them. The system then finally passes
the fully developed leads over to sales while giving visibility
to marketing metrics all along the way. Marketing automation
systems were created for exactly these steps and to support
prospects' behaviors in today's marketplace. In contrast, CRM
systems were mostly created to support sales processes. Although
these systems are very good at what they do for salespeople,
they lack in specific functions and workflow designed for the
marketers in today's lead nurturing world.
In other words, CRM systems drive the sales model touching on
forecasting, opportunity management, sales activities, pipeline
management and much more. But they are geared for use by sales
organizations. With the Internet changing the way people buy and
the way we "see" prospects, marketing must move way up in the
funnel to capture interested parties before they turn into
"sales ready" leads and get passed into the CRM system.
CRM for Marketing
Marketers need marketing automation systems
for so many things related to lead identification, tracking,
scoring and nurturing. For example, they need them to:
• Accumulate all leads, whether online or off.
• Automatically account for where the lead came from e.g., what
campaign did they click on or did they just happen on to the Web
site and fill in a form?
• Identify the actions the lead took over a period of time.
• Identify and score the important behavior or criteria in
order to determine when this lead is truly a lead and ready to
be passed on to sales.
• Be flexible enough to enable marketers to change criteria,
workflow and processes as they measure the success of these
programs.
• More easily and automatically nurture leads who are not ready
to buy.
• Give visibility into how many and what leads are moving on to
sales and which are not. This allows marketers to continually
tweak their campaigns by message, target, landing page and by
type to derive more value from lead generation dollars spent.
• Integrate with CRM systems so the flow to and from sales is
fluid and effective.
• Easily report on all the metrics marketers need to ensure
they are spending lead generation dollars in the right place.
• Be simple to implement and use, with the ability to extract
information when needed.
Even a few years back, a CRM system could suffice for marketers.
But the process of marketing automation was not nearly as
sophisticated as it is today. Furthermore, changes in the
buyers' behavior and the progressive development of online
access and media have continued to drive the marketing
automation process toward even more complexity. Along with that
complexity and sophistication comes the need for change. More
specifically, marketers must change their lead identification
and management practices to adapt and take advantage of what is
now available.
As businesses continue to stretch for dollars, marketers must
continually drive value for the lead generation dollars they are
spending. Whether that's delivering more qualified leads to
sales or finding other ways to maximize sales resources,
marketers can have a tremendous impact on bottom-line business
revenue and profit.
Source: Lisa Cramer link
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