For many years, businesses have been trying to get marketing and sales to work together. Like oil and water they didn’t mix. It was marketing’s job to bring in the prospects and sales' job to close them. Unfortunately, sales complained about the "low quality" leads marketing was delivering and marketing complained about the sales team’s inability to close business.
Good news! Thanks to things like social media marketing and the latest advances in marketing and sales automation, we are finally starting to get marketing and sales on the same team. Here is how we did it…
1. Set up a system for generating traffic using online traffic sources like Facebook and Google
2. Create a credible company website and some very specific landing pages to drive the traffic
3. Tie everything together using Marketing and Sales Automation software. In our case, Infusionsoft
The outcome…
- We are now able to know what traffic sources are working. We are able to track the sales lead from source to sale through Infusionsoft.
- We cut wasted leads. People who are interested go straight in the Infusionsoft CRM from the website and landing page forms.
- We can quickly test different offers and kill the under performers.
- We can get sales help “called in” when we need it to close higher ticket items.
- If something is not working in our system, we can see where the breakdown is occurring and fix it.
- We can keep clients engaged by continuing to communicate without the sales team having to do it all.
We have tried many marketing automation systems. Many don’t live up to the hype. Infusionsoft does. If you are considering a marketing and sales system, you are probably going to need some help. In spite of what many vendors say, there is no one system that "does it all”. Even Infusionsoft needs a few plug-ins to get the functionality you need.
Tying marketing and sales systems together can get hairy. That’s okay. It is worth the time and investment. The payoff can be huge. While your marketing and sales teams still might not go to lunch together, at least they be working together. And with better numbers coming from the system, we’ll bet the work will be a whole lot more productive too.