Marketing Automation Challenges – Avoiding Status Quo
Matt Smith, Executive VP and Co-Founder of 3forward, recently published an article on the MASG blog highlighting four roadblocks of marketing automation. Over the next few weeks we’ll issue four blog posts related to each obstacle. Each post will summarize the individual marketing automation challenges, include color commentary and provide additional recommendations.
Our first post pertains to Matt’s marketing automation challenge, “afraid of the water”. Here’s the premise; if companies maintain sales and marketing status quo and fail to keep up with new technology and process enhancements then they prohibit change. Most of the time change is good. I’ve always said the biggest risk is not knowing what your risk is. If your company seems to be off in their own world thinking their marketing processes and technology are just fine – to be blunt – it’s a bit ignorant.
In the post-Google and high tech era (year 2000 and beyond) change is inevitable. For example, sales and marketing processes have changed considerably. Buyers no longer opt to contact the vendor as their first step. Instead, they research solutions online and only contact the vendor when they’re ready. Check out our posts on B2B Buying Process and B2B Buyers to see how the sales and marketing landscape has changed. A growing number of businesses are adopting marketing automation or revenue generation software as we like to put it, to foster advancement and change in their sales and marketing processes. Revenue generation software increases leads, improves organizational efficiency, and produces higher quality leads. The benefits aren’t limited to these three things either. For example, revenue generation software provides vendors with valuable insight into a potential buyer’s interests and online behavior prior to vendor contact. For more information on how revenue generation helps marketers and sales click here: revenue generation for marketers, revenue generation for sales.
Before adopting marketing automation platforms companies need to avoid ignorance and embrace education. Matt recommends educating the entire C-Team on the new sales and marketing 2.0 environment (how marketing and sales should work together, what is marketing automation, how buyer’s buy, etc.). Once executives are up to speed it’s time to implement a plan. Matt suggests the head of marketing and sales mutually build a demand generation program. Finally, Matt suggests the CMO and CEO ask the rest of the organization to stay out of the way. Marketing will have their hands full adapting to sales and marketing 2.0.
Its clear avoiding status quo is a major obstacle to overcome when adopting marketing automation. Lead Liaison can help your organization get an education and design a plan. We can provide you with a complementary overview of the changing sales and marketing landscape and give you and/or your team an education on marketing automation. We also have a template to help you build and define your demand generation program. The template is called a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is a contractual-style document between sales and marketing teams for sales and marketing teams. The SLA provides a framework for a company’s entire lead management process.
Feel free to contact us if you think Lead Liaison can help your company avoid status quo in route to adopting marketing automation and revenue generation solutions.
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