5 Ways Your CRM Can Change the Way Sales and Marketing Collaborate
Sales and marketing alignment is one of the biggest goals of companies today. In fact, according to recent research conducted by SugarCRM, almost 60% of respondents reported that CRM is more important for achieving sales and marketing goals versus five years ago. Not only that, 46% of the same surveyed leaders said that the top technology they’re integrating with their CRM is marketing automation and email marketing, and one-third say collecting customer feedback to align marketing and sales strategy is a key priority.
Once perfect alignment is achieved between the two departments, enterprises can pride themselves on faster growth and higher profits. One easy way to achieve sales and marketing alignment is through CRM implementation.
CRM Implementation: How Does it Accelerate Sales and Marketing Alignment?
Because sales teams spend most of their days discussing and interacting with prospects via multiple communication channels, including through marketing-developed assets, it’s easy to understand how better alignment between the two departments’ goals and processes can facilitate business operations, drive growth, and produce higher profits. Below are just a few ways CRM implementation can aid collaboration between the two:
- Based on CRM data, sales reps can carry personalized interactions with prospects and existing customers in your database.
- Marketing has a deep understanding of creating suitable campaigns and materials that aid sales in their lead-nurturing efforts.
- Based on the types of marketing materials that prospects and customers interact with, Sales knows which leads are most likely to convert and which accounts and contacts to prioritize.
- CRM tools can help both Marketing and Sales save time and money while focusing on high-revenue processes.
Based on CRM data, Marketing can tailor targeted campaigns and ads. - Marketing can gather insights from marketing reports on campaigns and customer preferences, past purchases, etc. In this scenario, segmentation becomes more effective.
- Ultimately, marketing can run more effective A/B testing.
5 Ways Your CRM Can Change the Way Sales and Marketing Collaborate
1. Increase Cross-Departmental Communication
Although Sales and Marketing have very different roles, they share the same goals and objectives. Thus, it makes perfect sense to unify their systems to increase cross-departmental visibility on progress, objectives, and even goals. A CRM is a perfect tool to offer your teams visibility of the same metrics and KPIs to better understand which initiatives have the best payoff.
Besides, a CRM allows them to increase communication and align their strategies.
2. Common Goals and Objectives
We mentioned previously that your sales and marketing teams sometimes share the same goals and objectives. In other words, your teams must collaborate as a single unit and share the same view of their progress. Giving access to your teams to unified dashboards that hold insights into pipeline segmentation, health, conversion rates, etc., will help them better orchestrate their efforts in terms of lead generation, scoring, and lead-nurturing goals while agreeing on which goals are the best to track for each step individually.
Besides, both Marketing and Sales can clearly define their roles in achieving their goals and objectives, a holistic CRM being the core of their efforts.
3. Eliminate Duplicate Data and Efforts
Being mindful of customer interactions sometimes means avoiding duplicating your messaging. For example, prospects might get easily overwhelmed if Sales reaches out to them with a message after Marketing has already shared the same message with them.
A CRM offers both teams a clear view of each account, past interactions, what has been previously discussed with them, and whether or not they expect your company to reach out to them shortly. Such tools offer both teams the same view of where each web visitor, lead, and customers stand in the buyer’s journey.
4. Insights-Based Decisions
Your CRM is the central hub for all the data entering your databases. According to recent SugarCRM research, 60% of respondents cite using CRM as a centralized communication hub for nurturing leads or customers as their top priority for maximizing CRM over the next five years, followed by (45%) getting a complete view of customer interactions. For Sales and Marketing, this is a critical aspect of their joint efforts (sales and marketing have access to the same lead, prospect, or contact information in real time).
The automation aspect also matters in the process. If Marketing needs to manually update records, critical information might get lost in the process (think prospect interests, needs, and preferences). However, a CRM will automatically populate record information, which makes the data more accurate and reliable. As a result, the Sales team’s efforts are more prone to be effective, and the conversion is more likely to happen. By constantly improving the contact’s profile, the sales team will be better positioned to nurture more leads into customers.
5. Sales Activation Through Proactive Notifications
The marketing department can effectively use CRM tools to send proactive notifications and alerts to sales when a record is nurtured to the point in which Sales can confidently take action. In this case, a good use of your CRM would be to set up a notification to alert the sales team to instantly follow up with a new lead or remind them to call prospects at the right time. Once the sales follow-up occurs, they can loop in Marketing through a comment in your CRM. This way, both teams are fully aware of the progress and are perfectly aligned.
Your CRM is the catalyst to knowing your customers better and aligning all your efforts, regardless of department or role. Ensure your CRM features all the capabilities above to ensure perfect cross-departmental alignment.
Want to learn more about why aligning data, communication, and strategy between these two teams is your golden ticket to achieving objectives and building sustainable sales pipeline? Download our guide, Sales + Marketing: Better Together.
Or, interested in learning more about accelerating your sales and marketing efforts with a CRM? Get in touch with us!
