Does it ever feel like your marketing, sales and service teams are competing against each other rather than working together? Does your sales team feel like it’s carrying the burden of marketing? Does your service team feel like the sales team set client expectations that just aren’t feasible?
These are all real struggles when it comes to growing and sustaining a business. When your entire customer care team isn’t aligned, it not only leads to internal conflict and finger-pointing, but it also hurts the perception of your company from both current and prospective customers.
Whether it be sales, service, or marketing, the core of your workforce is still human. And, as such, each department should be working with the other departments as part of your overall business strategy. Whenever these departments aren’t aligned, you run the risk of inefficient workloads and poor customer service. This, in turn, creates friction points. That is, without interdepartmental collaboration, customers are passed on from marketing, to sales, to service, with gaps in information.
Now that we understand the dangers of a disjointed team, let’s dig into how you can reconcile your departments to improve B2B sales using a modern digital platform.
Fortunately, there is no shortage of software options and tools available to help business leaders align their teams around a common, unified customer experience. It seems like every month there’s a new customer relationship management (CRM) system or content management system (CMS) on the market - most of which offer built-in tools to help you modernize your marketing, sales and service experience and business intelligence. However the problem is, there are only a few systems that actually do a good job of aligning marketing, sales and service. Be careful that you don't get stuck piecing together various platforms and software applications to deliver an experience that can be done more simply using the right tool. A great CRM should be a single solution for aligning your marketing, sales, and service needs and is crucial for increasing sales revenue, eliminating headaches, and simplifying your processes.
With modern B2B marketing strategies—like inbound marketing and account-based marketing—your sales team can deliver leads that are highly qualified and well-educated. Simply put, they understand their needs as well as the solution your business can provide them with.
Related Content: The Buyer's Journey: How B2B Customers Find Your Business Naturally
The buyer's journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, consider, evaluate, and decide on when to purchase a new product or service. (Hubspot)
When your B2B sales are aligned and automated using a digital platform, you can efficiently track current and prospective customers through the buyer’s journey and help lead them through the sales funnel by providing them with helpful and relevant information. By using marketing automation and automated sales enablement tools, new business development teams have been able to achieve a 10X or greater increase in new business revenue quoted to qualified leads.
As you can see, marketing automation through a digital platform provides a lot of value to your company. In fact, 68% of businesses use automation in some way (HubSpot). Here's a list with a few reasons why.
These automations, in turn, dramatically reduce time requirements, eliminate stress, and increase productivity for your sales, marketing and service departments, all the while creating happier, more loyal customers who also become advocates of your brand.
Read This to Learn More: 5 Ways Marketing Automation Helps Qualify More Business Sales Leads
If this approach sounds too good to be true, that’s because you’ve probably been sold something similar in the past that never materialized the way you expected it to. Too many companies are eager to adopt new software for their marketing and sales teams, but don’t do an effective job of incorporating it into their culture. At the end of the day, your people are still the most valuable asset you have to shape the market’s perception of your brand.
However, a digital platform like Hubspot's CRM opens up a world of possibilities to break down silos and information hoarding across your team. The good news? It’s never been easier to align your entire organization around a unified customer strategy and experience.
We admit that it can be daunting to understand where to start, though. At Open Path, we’ve helped many successful B2B companies align their teams and modernize their customer experience using Hubspot's digital platform (CRM). To get recommendations for your company, schedule a free call with our Chief Growth Strategist.
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