"Only 25% of the sales leads and collateral that marketing creates is ever used by sales teams." Peter Strohkorb. If this does not seem like a problem, I do not know what does. In the ever evolving and ultra-competitive world that is business, how can one hope to get ahead if 75% of their team's efforts aren't being used? This problem has been one that has been around for ages and will be around for as long as we are willing to waste time, energy and money. If you were in marketing would you want to work as hard knowing only a quarter of your work is actually being used? In sales would you trust marketing knowing that three fourths of what they send you does not help?
Of course not! So why don't we change this? Do we not know that this happens? Do we not care it is happening? Or do we just not know how to fix it?
If your team is complaining, which they most likely are, then they know it is happening and they definitely want to change it. This just proves that they do not know how to fix it, and this is the problem.
However, we have the solution. This solution is Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I am going to explain, five easy reasons why Microsoft Dynamics CRM will help integrate your sales and marketing teams:
- Sales teams will have access to the marketing tools.
Sales teams will learn exactly how marketing found their leads. With just this little bit of knowledge it can spark a conversation between the two departments that will drastically improve the function of each. Now your sales team will be able to explain to your marketing team why they aren’t using this lead. Which will help your marketing team to avoid finding leads that are similar to that prospect.
- Marketing can see what Sales processes are successful.
In order for this to be successful, it needs to be a give and a take. Sales cannot have all the power over marketing and vice versa. With marketing able to have access to all of what sales is doing, they can give constructive feedback and figure out what they are doing that is successful and what is not successful. The main goal of this interaction is to create a learning experience and to not waste extremely valuable resources.
- More data to show what works and what does not work.
CRM works best when everyone tracks what they are doing. With an integrated CRM system, the marketing team will have full access to what the sales team is doing and can see if their process is successful or not. This also means that the sales team will have access to every single campaign that the marketing department puts on. They will know what to expect, and when to expect it. This will lead to a better prepared sales team and one that will be able to use the leads generated by this campaign much more efficiently.
- Open communication between marketing and sales will lead to better alignment.
Creating a productive communication base between your sales and marketing teams is essential in order to grow and stay successful in the ever changing business environment. That is exactly what CRM does for these two teams. Now that marketing and sales have access to both team’s work, they can address what is successful, what is not successful, what ways to improve the current campaigns and everything that will increase their productivity.
- Let sales team sell and marketing team market.
Now that these two teams are integrated and able to work together, the marketing team can stick to generating their leads and the sales team can work on closing all of the leads given to them. Before integration, sales team members often felt that they needed to do their own marketing in order to find qualified leads. Now that they can trust the marketing team they don’t have to and will be able to spend their time on their job.
After more businesses adopt Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Peter Strohkorb won’t be able to say that "Only 25% of the sales leads and collateral that marketing creates is ever used by sales teams." We named just five of the benefits from Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but there are countless other ways that this can help your business. Check out www.socius1.com/solutions/crm for more of these great ideas!
Build a Business Case for CRM here.
By Socius, a Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Ohio and Kansas
The post How Microsoft Dynamics CRM Solves a Constant Sales Challenge appeared first on CRM Software Blog.