This past week I presented to a group of Salesforce users at the Sydney Salesforce User Group. We discussed Marketing Automation and helped them understand how Oracle Eloqua Marketing Cloud was a great solution. I’m a little biased of course.
In the course of the morning the discussion came up of fields and the data we ask CRM users to put in those fields. We all know that if you have ten fields and you make four of them “required” and the rest optional, you have little chance the remaining six will ever be added to.
But what if you can give something back in return for the data you’re asking for?
That’s the key, if CRM users – specifically the Sales user, can see benefit to them in adding optional data you have a far better chance of the data being added in the first place.
An example: Let’s say you’re on the Contact record of the CRM, you ask for the normal profile data i.e. name, job title, perhaps job category but then you also ask for “Company Revenue” which is not a required field.
If this field is completed and the user has an Opportunity associated with the Contact imagine being able to trigger an automated email to the salesperson with a list of other “Closed/Won” Opportunities in a similar company revenue band with similar products?
This automated email to the salesperson would provide them with additional background to help them see how previous deals were won. They can contact the salespeople associated with the previous deal/s and discuss or review their strategy for their current deal.
Sales & Marketing Alignment
The term “Sales & Marketing Alignment” gets thrown around a lot in my world. What does it really mean?
I think in a nutshell it’s about providing Sales with information that helps them perform their role better, close more sales, engage with better quality information and have insight into their prospect’s and customer’s Digital Body Language.
Automation is one way the marketing team can provide better quality information to the sales team. In the example above, an automated response can deliver the right information, to the right person at the right time.
By sales adding specific data to the CRM and synchronising that data to Eloqua, marketing has better profile information to tailor future communications.
