Last week, we touched on some of the marketing benefits of integrating your CRM with a marketing automation system, including improved lead qualification, better revenue attribution, and targeted messaging. But marketing isn’t the only team that sees benefits from integrating the two systems — sales teams do, too. With improved tracking and activity alerts, your sales team has all of the tools they need to stay privy to the most relevant, actionable information. And with marketing passing along only the most qualified leads, sales reps can focus their time on what really matters — closing deals and bringing in new revenue.
Let’s go through a few of the sales benefits of integrating your CRM with a marketing automation system (and if you want more information about CRMs and marketing automation, take a look at our free white paper, Marketing Automation and Your CRM: The Dynamic Duo).
Behavioral Tracking
Adding marketing automation to your CRM gives you the opportunity to go beyond basic demographic information and delve into detailed behavioral tracking, so that you can view which pages your prospects are visiting, what types of content they’re interested in, and where they are in the buying cycle. With prospect tracking and analytics, you can see a log of all touch points with your prospects, from files downloaded to email correspondences and more. This prospect activity history provides unparalleled insight into exactly what your leads are interested in, allowing your sales reps to tailor their phone calls or sales pitches accordingly.
Real-Time Activity Alerts
With marketing automation, your sales reps will receive real-time alerts whenever a prospect is active on your site or takes a specific action (like visiting the pricing page or downloading a white paper). By having this detailed information delivered in real time via email, CRM, or a desktop application, sales can stay up-to-date on their prospects’ activities and interests, giving them the ability to “strike while the iron is hot” instead of wasting time chasing down dead ends.
Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Forrester Research)
Nurture Leads to Sales-Readiness
Lead nurturing has surged to the forefront of marketing and sales strategies because of its ability to ensure that buyers are getting the information they need, when they need it. Using lead nurturing, marketers can automatically “drip” valuable content to leads over time, nurturing them to a sales-ready state and preventing sales reps from wasting time on leads who aren’t yet ready to buy. Lead nurturing also gives sales reps the ability to automate communications with prospects who are actively engaging in the buying process — by making it appear as though emails are personalized, one-to-one messages from each sales rep. This can reduce a lot of the heavy lifting for sales, especially when it comes to follow-ups.
Get Lead Information in One Central Interface
With lead and prospect information syncing bi-directionally between your CRM and marketing automation platforms, your sales reps can see everything they need to know without leaving their CRM. This includes all of the data collected through your marketing automation system, including social profile information, the emails your prospects have received, what they’ve been clicking on, which forms they’ve filled out on your website, and more. Sales reps can use this information to tailor their conversations to the needs of each individual prospect.
Want more information about marketing automation and your CRM? Check out our latest white paper: “Marketing Automation and Your CRM: The Dynamic Duo.”
