What Makes a Sales Team Effective?
One of the easiest ways for sales to connect with prospects is to start by understanding what kinds of challenges the prospect has, then focusing on those challenges when making their pitch. By using Sugar Sell and Sugar Market together, sales reps can see all of a prospect’s activity, including the pages they have visited and content they’ve downloaded, for a full 360 view of their buying journey so far.
By drilling into this data, reps can learn about the content prospects are most interested in and infer what topics of conversation would be most interesting to them. Reps can also see if prospects have recently attended events, signed up for emails, or are part of a specific marketing campaign, further increasing their knowledge of the prospect and their level of interest. By doing so, they increase their chances of a captive audience with bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) buyers.
Recently, I’ve been writing about the importance of getting marketing and sales on the same page and the impact that can have on a company and its revenue. One of the most important steps in making that partnership a reality is by using solutions that bridge the marketing/sales divide.
When Marketing & Sales Automation Meet
When marketing teams can build nurture tracks (see ~:46 in the video) that directly (and seamlessly) translate over to the sales automation platform, teams have the building blocks they need to build a true marketing/sales partnership. For example, in Market, marketers can assign tasks for sales to follow up with interested customers (~:52). These “next best action” tasks flow from Market over to Sell.
One of the coolest things about this all-in-one platform is that reps can take advantage of a wide range of tools that meet both sales and marketing needs. Once a rep receives a notification to follow up with a prospect in the above scenario, for example, they can plug that task into Sugar Automate (formerly “Customer Journey Plug-in") to ensure a consistent and repeatable customer journey sales sequence. These sequences can help sales reps follow sales best practices as defined by their organizations.
Sales & Marketing Tools for Success
And, of course, all activities can be tracked in the Timeline dashlet, shown here (starting ~1:25). This dashlet shows all marketing and sales touchpoints (including meetings) to give a quick and easy view of the activities related to a prospect. It also allows sellers and marketers to connect the dots on how they are servicing the customer with a 360-degree view. Additionally, sellers can add additional touchpoints (e.g., phone calls and meetings) as needed and integrate those touchpoints into the Automate sequence.
For a visual, “birds-eye” view of their current progress, sellers can view their Dashboards, (~2:00). Focus drawers provide a quick and easy way for sellers to act on this information and progress deals into the next step of the customer journey (~2:10). And for quick team collaboration on deals, the Comment Log dashlet allows cross-functional communication within the CRM.
For more information on how to help your marketing and sales teams work more effectively with SugarCRM, contact your account manager or Sugar partner today.