April 2011 Archives

Picture the scene, five people in a room trying to figure out how we can use the resources at our disposal to measure more precisely the flow of leads from channel right through to customer. We're all looking at an interesting chart with a range of boxes, describing the journey our prospective customers travel from first engaging with a brand to becoming a customer. I'm sure many of you have been in similar meetings many times before. This isn't a new problem. Marketers have always wanted to understand how they can acquire more opportunities cheaper and have invested in technologies in an attempt to make it easier. The whole process is dependent on sales and marketing teams working together with technology as an important resource in the team.

Hubsport recently highlighted five tips that can help sales and marketing teams work better together.  The points cover initatives such as 'communicate campaigns'; 'share results' and 'ask for feedback', most of which could be achieved without clever technology. Our question now though is how can we 'optimise' the technology we have invested in to increase the visibility of the sales and marketing pipeline and the volume of outcomes that we're all focused on?

There isn't a simple answer.  It's a given fact that sales and marketing teams need to work closely together to fill the pipeline of prospective customers.  However, as well as marketing and sales needing each other, both also need technology and people who understand systems and data.  These people can help make this whole complex process work well so that we can answer important questions such as 'what is your cost per opportunity?'; how does it compare per channel?'; what is your cost per sale?'  These are simple questions to ask, but in large, complex business environments with multiple teams and sophisticated technologies, they may not always be as easy to answer as we'd like.  When it comes to metrics, the easiest to do are very rarely the most valuable.