If you’ve been following our blog in recent weeks, you’re familiar with the story of Anna and James — our hypothetical power couple who demonstrate for all of us what sales-marketing alignment ought to be.
We’ve been following Anna and James through a typical work week, looking at entirely plausible, albeit fictional, scenarios where they use their respective tools to close deals together.
For those who are new to Anna and James’ story, let’s quickly rewind.
Monday: Meet Anna and James
In post one, we get to know our favorite power couple: Anna is a mid-market sales rep who thinks in quotas, while James is a marketer with high aspirations to impact his business. The week kicks 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).
![phone]()
Tuesday – Thursday: Anna’s Story
In post two, we get a better look at how Anna uses technology to connect with prospects and manage her deals — even in the most surprising places.
We follow Anna from her living room, to a train platform, and back to the office as she sends tracked follow-up emails, adds a cold prospect to a nurture track, and prepares for a demo. Go back to learn about Engage for Gmail and Engage Alerts, and how using them effectively greatly simplifies Anna’s job and allows her to work from anywhere (even waiting for a train).
All caught up? Ok, let’s see how the week ends — and learn a little more about the wins that James has been making throughout the week.
Friday
3:30 PM
With the weekend only hours away, Anna reviews her activities of the week before her Friday check-in with her manager. She pulls up her Salesforce Engage Reports to see how her emails performed throughout the week. Anna’s excited to see that her Engage Campaigns have performed well across the board – lots of clicks and opens. She notices that a large number of her Boston prospects didn’t open her Monday email until Tuesday and makes a note to herself to send a reminder email about the event the following Tuesday.
Something else interesting catches Anna’s eye. One of her most effective emails of the week was an Engage Campaign she created on her own, without a marketing template — a short email about a simple product update that she sent to all of her assigned prospects. Click-through rates were off the charts on this email, and Anna remembers seeing a number of prospects active on the site after she sent it out.
On the way to her end-of-week check-in, Anna swings by James’ desk and shows him the graph. If the email resonated so strongly with her prospects, perhaps it would be worth creating a template for all of the reps to use? Clearly this product update, however small, addresses a pain point that resonates even better than anticipated.
James is very grateful. Creating an email template for this update is a simple task that may prove to be extremely helpful for his sales team, and he knows the perfect piece of content to include in the email. Plus, now he has another great announcement for Monday morning’s sales meeting.
So How Did James Win?
Although Anna played a prominent role in our story with the many ways in which she used the Salesforce Engage product, James was enjoying important wins behind the scenes — let’s take a look.
James was directly recognized by sales for playing an important role in the sales process. It might not sound like a huge win, but how many marketers can say that their sales team recognizes and appreciates the direct impact they have on closing deals? If James hadn’t reached out to the sales team about the Boston event and crafted up that email template for Anna to use, she may never have reconnected with that prospect. And the acknowledgement that James played a role in bringing in that bottom-line revenue may make things a lot easier on James the next time he goes to ask for additional events budget.
James’ marketing content was actually used in a sales interaction. There are few feelings as frustrating as spending hours on a piece of content that you think will help to sell your product, pushing it live, and watching it be forgotten by the next day (or the next meeting). James can feel satisfied knowing that the emails and content he’s building are actually reaching prospects and impacting the buyer’s journey.
James received feedback from sales on his marketing campaigns. This makes James’ life a heck of a lot easier. It doesn’t matter how many buyer personas he builds — the sales team is on the front lines, talking with buyers on a day-to-day basis, and their insights are invaluable to him. A simple request like the email template for a new feature is a quick way for him to make a huge impact — and this feedback loop is sales-marketing alignment at its very best.
James enabled his sales team to do a little marketing of their own. Giving Anna access to templates that he created allowed her to tweak them to meet the needs of her specific prospects — while still allowing James to rest assured that the quality of content going out to prospects was up to his standards. And by giving her direct access to reporting on the emails she was sending out, Anna took more of an interest in what was working and what wasn’t, and came back to James with the details.
All in all, not too shabby a week for James.
Want to read more about Anna and James’ story, as well as the features of Salesforce Engage? 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.
