Driving Growth with the Right Sales & Marketing Technologies

This post originally appeared on the Magnetude Consulting blog.

If your sales pipeline is too sparse or you don’t have enough confidence your team will hit revenue targets, you’re not alone. Many folks we work with that have sales responsibilities are challenged by the balancing act of driving their reps to prospect regularly, giving enough attention to high value clients, and balancing all of the other demands facing them as a leader.

One area that’s causing a lot of uncertainty is determining which of the hundreds of new sales & marketing technologies out there are worth considering. Evaluating these technologies is time consuming. Not looking at them at all is irresponsible, given how valuable they can be.

Below are a few technologies that have driven strong results for our clients’ sales & marketing programs:

1.   Live Chat

Despite the importance of a well-performing website, the reality is that up to 98% of website visitors never convert to a lead. If you’re not familiar, live chat is a feature available on your company website, whereby visitors can reach out in real-time to a salesperson and ask questions. But did you know this can also be used as a two-way communication vehicle? With many Live Chat programs, the salesperson is able to see when someone is on your site, what region they’re located in, and even the company they’re representing. The salesperson can then reach out to the visitor and intercept them when they’re on key pages of the website in order to start a dialogue as early as possible. This can greatly enhance the sales process. 

2.   Website Lead Intelligence Tools

Lead intelligence tools help you learn more about your visitors and the companies you’re attracting to your site—and how they’re engaging once on your site. You can quickly find the right contacts and add them to your prospecting efforts. These toolscan also provide your marketing team with better intelligence and help support account-based marketing campaigns.  Want to learn which lead intelligence tools we recommend? Let us know.

3.   Sales Intelligence Platforms

Sales intelligence platforms have come a LONG way in recent years (email us to find out our favorites). They provide your sales force with rich databases to make your sales and marketing programs much smarter, more targeted, and (occasionally) more opportunistic. With these kinds of platforms, you’ll be able to pull highly specific criteria into your database. Some examples include: companies with specific software installs, company initiatives, and detailed org charts.

4.   CRMs

We all know that CRMs (or customer relationship management software) allows your sales team to manage the lead flow of your prospects and relationships with current customers. While Salesforce is considered the “gold standard”, there are literally hundreds of CRMs on the market. If you have a CRM in place, but you’re not happy with it, there are specific elements to consider when choosing a new one.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• How much data do you have in your current CRM and on each contact record?
• What level of reporting and data visualization would you like to have?
• How much is being done to generate leads on the marketing side?
• What kinds of integrations do you need with other software systems, including your marketing teams’ systems?
• How much time and budget do you have to migrate to a new system?
• How much time do you want your sales team spending in your CRM?

Being able to answer these questions will help guide your software vetting process in a much more structured way.

These are just a few examples of the areas to consider for marketing & sales technology investments. Given the many kinds of sales technologies on the market today and the range of benefits they offer, it’s important to be clear on where in your sales and marketing funnel you need the most help to align your investments accordingly.

Not sure where to start? Based on your current organizational structure and needs, Magnetude can help make recommendations on technologies to serve you best. Contact us today for a consultation.

Magnetude Consulting is a B2B marketing firm that specializes in working with entrepreneurial companies looking to market the right way in today’s increasingly complex environment by providing full-service, fractional marketing department services.