A sales and marketing platform is a collection of tools that enable companies to nurture leads and engage with them at different stages of the sales funnel. It includes lead management, customer relationship management (CRM), sales automation and email marketing.
Growth teams can use a sales and marketing platform to create a mutually beneficial feedback loop, organize recurring client data more reliably and improve performance metrics and deal cycles.
CRM
CRM is a set of strategies, methodologies and technologies that use customer data to develop, improve and manage business relationships. It also refers to the software that supports those practices.
A CRM system gives sales people the ability to establish lasting connections with customers and drive long-term revenue growth. It helps them make the most of their time by eliminating manual administrative tasks and allowing them to focus on engaging customers.
For example, CRM solutions provide visibility into the sales pipeline and sales funnel to help reps prioritize opportunities and focus on accelerating deal closures. They can also pinpoint at-risk clients through engagement metrics and implement retention strategies proactively.
Some CRM systems also include marketing-automation functionality, which enables marketers to automatically follow up on leads and send email campaigns at specific times to keep prospects engaged. This can significantly lower the cost of sales. This is especially important for small businesses that may have limited budgets.
Lead Management
The best way to ensure that your leads make it through the sales pipeline is to implement a clear, repeatable management process. A clear structure allows sales to focus on high-potential customers and avoid wasting time on low-value leads.
A well-defined lead management process includes establishing criteria for distinguishing between marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs). This helps to prioritize lead generation and nurture strategies, while ensuring that no opportunities slip through the cracks.
A structured process also includes ensuring compliance with data privacy laws and building trust with leads. This can be done through the use of data analysis, tracking lead behavior, and providing a personalised experience for each lead. It can also include a feedback loop between sales and marketing, fostering a unified customer journey. The result is a smooth handoff from marketing to sales, with every lead understood and valued. Ultimately, this helps to drive more qualified leads into the funnel and ultimately convert them into paying customers.
Sales Automation
Sales automation (SFA) is a set of tools that take on many of the core daily tasks that limit the time your sales team spends reaching out to potential customers, converting them into leads and, ultimately, making sales. Optimizing efficiency across these areas makes for a more modern go-to-market strategy and a higher bottom line.
A good SFA tool will house, organize and prioritize data for you—and sync it instantly so that information is always up-to-date. It will also allow you to prioritize and funnel marketing leads, automate email responses, and update account records with any new contact information or pricing details. You can get more information if you give go high level 30 day trial a try!
More advanced SFA tools use predictive AI to monitor your pipeline and provide insights and recommendations that keep your deals and forecast on track. For example, if you see that a current customer may be at risk of churning, your software could send them a special offer to entice them to stay. It can also create content like reports and call summaries based on automated analysis or prompts to save your sales teams valuable time.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation streamlines tasks to free up time for marketers, improve engagement and optimize ROI. It can also help your business build a strong, long-term relationship with customers through more personalized messaging that sounds like you’re talking to them individually.
For example, when someone signs up for a webinar, they’re automatically added to a nurturing campaign where they’ll receive a series of emails that gradually guide them toward buying your products. When the marketing automation software determines that they’re ready for a sales handoff, it alerts sales and sends them the contact record to begin the conversation.
By tracking and analyzing customer behavior, marketing automation can provide intelligence to deepen marketing teams’ understanding of their customer base so that they can deliver measurably more effective campaigns. To learn more about how to leverage the benefits of a unified CRM and marketing automation platform, download our guide.
