I continually hear from marketers how difficult it is work with their sales team. This is an issue that exists in most organizations and is something I have talked about in the past (see more on the “silo effect”). So I wanted to provide some advice on how help build those bridges…

First off, sales people care about selling… If you are not helping them sell, you are not helping them. This is a simple statement, but important to understand. So in that vein, here are some ways that you can help the sales team using a Marketing Automation solution:

1. Make that first contact for them – create a lead nurturing program that will automatically send out an introductory e-mail on their behalf after a lead has registered on your web site (i.e. for a trial, download, etc.). These are basically boiler plate e-mails anyhow, so can send an e-mail with personalization for the lead’s information (i.e. Hello Bob) as well as including the sales person’s direct e-mail address, phone number, etc. in the e-mail header and the e-mail signature (this way if the lead replies, is going directly to their sales person).

2. Give them the info where they want it – sales people live in the CRM. They do not want to log into multiple systems to get information and often won’t. So you need to make sure your Marketing Automation solution pushes all the leads’ activity (i.e. email opens, form registrations, web activity, etc.) into the CRM.

3. Tell them what a lead is doing, when they are doing it – sometimes making a sale comes down to timing. Being able to catch an elusive lead while they are at their desk is often difficult, so having a Marketing Automation solution that sends out an e-mail to the sales person when their lead is on your web site or opens your e-mail will give them the advantage.

There are plenty of other things that can be done with a Marketing Automation solution that will make your sales team happy, such as the basics of qualifying leads before sending to the CRM and automatically nurturing the leads that are not yet qualified, but that is for another post (maybe even a book).