Last week, I told you a story about Anna and James. Today, that story continues with a closer look at how Anna, in particular, uses the tools at her disposal to work more efficiently throughout the week.
In case you’re playing catch-up here: Anna is a mid-market sales rep who thinks in quotas, while James is a marketer with high aspirations to impact his business, and their hypothetical success story can show you how sales-marketing alignment ought to be — not with high-level, ‘pie-in-the-sky’ marketing speak, but with entirely plausible scenarios where a marketer and a sales rep use their respective tools to close deals together.
In our first post (which I highly encourage you to read if you haven’t done so already), the week kicked off successfully for Anna and James when James announced to the sales team that marketing would be hosting an event in Boston, and that it would be highly beneficial for prospects to attend.
Per Anna’s request, James drafted up an email template about the event that Anna could access directly within Salesforce through Engage Campaigns. Anna reached out to her Boston-area prospects and quickly received a few responses. (Go back to see the details of how Anna and James used Engage Campaigns; or better yet, download the e-book to read the full story as well as product feature details).
Ok, let’s fast-forward to Tuesday evening.
Tuesday
8:45 PM
As Anna settles in to watch TV, she opens her laptop for one last email check and finds another response to the event email:
Anna, Sorry I haven’t responded to your last couple of emails; things have been extremely busy around here but we are still interested in your solution. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend the trade show, but would you be available for a product demo later this week? Thanks.
Anna is ecstatic. This is a major deal that she’d nearly given up on after several weeks of unanswered emails and voicemails.
In Gmail, she immediately clicks Reply, and begins crafting her response with possible demo times and a few additional resources that could be helpful to look at ahead of time. Because of the Sales Cloud Engage Gmail plugin, Anna is able to send a tracked Pardot email directly within the Gmail interface. A small blue Salesforce cloud appears at the bottom of her Compose box with the options to “Track Clicks with Pardot” and “Track Opens with Pardot.” Anna clicks both and sends off her reply, already excited to check back in the morning to see if her email has been opened and clicked on.
Wednesday
8:30 AM
First thing Wednesday morning, Anna is waiting to catch a train. She pulls out her phone and opens her Salesforce1 app to get a sense of her day. Using the filters that she’s set up for Sales Alerts, she’s able to view the past four days-worth of activities from a group she’s identified as “Hot Prospects,” and is pleased to see she has a long list of downloads, page views, and social interactions.
Curious to see how her list of Boston prospects has been doing since her email on Monday, Anna quickly switches over to filter by geography and looks at her Boston-area prospects. She’s excited to see an increase in activity since her email; it seems a number of her Boston prospects have decided to check out the website again, and a few even downloaded resources (still no opens, clicks, or responses to her email about a demo from last night, but she’d give it some time).
However, Anna does notice one particular prospect in this group that hasn’t opened or clicked her email — and she isn’t surprised. She hasn’t heard from this prospect or received any notifications of activity in over five months. It’s time to pass this lead back to marketing.
Anna recalls an announcement that James made in a recent sales meeting: the marketing team had created a new lead nurturing campaign for colder prospects, aimed at getting these prospects to re-engage with the website in some way. Over a nine-month period, the prospect would receive occasional emails with a very sales-light message: ‘Thought you might enjoy this article about saving on energy costs at your business.‘ The emails would appear to be one-off emails from the assigned rep, to maintain a consistent buyer experience if the prospect decided to reengage and speak with the rep.
Anna opens her unresponsive Boston prospects’ profile, and with one click, adds him to “Reengagement Drip” — just as her train arrives at the platform.
Thursday
1:15 PM
Thursday afternoon, Anna is brushing up on her product knowledge before her 2pm demo with her Boston prospect. As she’s reading through articles, a Sales Alert pops up on her screen: the prospect she’s about to do a demo for is currently browsing a page of their website that explains a specific product feature. Bingo!
Anna quickly pulls up Engage Alerts in Salesforce. Looking at the past four days of history, it looks like her prospect has visited three different pages that relate to this feature — and not much else.
Anna remembers another recent announcement from James: a case study released by the marketing team about a customer that had seen phenomenal success with this particular feature. She pulls up her templates again and browses through…aha! Anna sees the template that James referenced, highlighting an impressive stat and linking to the case study as well as an e-book with more details on the feature. Anna opens the template with her WYSIWYG editor and begins editing the copy to work as a follow-up email to her demo.
1:59 PM
Anna dials in to her demo feeling confident. She knows where her prospect’s interests lie, she has resources on hand that can help to answer his questions, and she’s ready to lead the conversation in the direction she wants it to go.
Want to find out what happens next? Stay tuned to our blog or grab your free copy of the e-book, and be sure to check out more of the features and capabilities of Salesforce Engage on our website.
