My wife is in the job market and has been looking at some Account Management opportunities. She’s excited to be looking for new opportunities but somewhat concerned about the focus of some positions she’s seen so far. She feels that some are focused on the bottom line “numbers game” a bit too much. Since I’m in a Customer Service oriented position as well, this conversation led to an interesting discussion about something I called the “Continuum of Customer Service” at the time. This idea has developed gradually, especially while working with the talented individuals over here are LoopFuse, who have taught me quite a bit over the years. Basically it’s the concept that, no matter what you do, customer service reigns. Whether you are trying to find new customers, close a deal, or keep them within the fold, a good product is not the end of the customer experience. How the customer perceives your company and the interactions they have with you will go a long way in determining if they will stick with you for the long term. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Sales’
The Continuum of Customer Service
Monday, September 16th, 2013Marketing automation is key to SaaS sales success
Tuesday, September 6th, 2011If you run a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business or happen to be the Vice President of Marketing at one, you need to have marketing automation in place. Why you may ask?
Most, if not all, SaaS companies offer a free trial of some kind whether that is based on a period of time or staying below a usage threshold. Either way there is a large volume of user registrations at the top end of the funnel and these can vary from curious passers by to genuinely interested sales opportunities.
Sorting and segmenting out those opportunities from the rest can be time consuming not to mention highly frustrating for the sales team as they lack an understanding of just how interested each “lead” is in the product and can end up wasting time on unqualified opportunities. (more…)
3 Steps to Preparing Your Organization for Marketing Automation and How Sales Plays a Role
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011It may be called marketing automation, but be careful not to leave sales out of the equation, especially during the planning stage prior to implementing a marketing automation solution. Below are three processes that sales and marketing should collectively establish to achieve the greatest possible return on investment from marketing automation. (more…)
Lead Nurturing with Education
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
If your buyer is not educated, then they will feel unready to engage the sales conversation with your team. Filling this gap with strategic marketing automation lead flows in Loopfuse that help the buyer to ask the right questions sets up a qualified lead for your sales team.
If you sell a sophisticated product or service, expect that much of the focus of your marketing automation campaigns will revolve around education. If you provide this value to potential buyers, then your expertise becomes established in their mind.
Here are some approaches we have used to in our marketing automation consulting to help our clients funnel their prospects through the buying process which will help you design your own processes: (more…)
3 Loopfuse Sales Handoff Tips
Friday, June 24th, 2011Making Loopfuse work with your sales process is more than just integrating Salesforce.com and Loopfuse. That is merely the technical aspect. The process and synchronization of sales activities with marketing automation must be thought through, implemented and adopted by your team to extract maximum benefit from your Loopfuse implementation.
To drive Loopfuse success here are three tips which you can use to have maximum impact on converting leads: (more…)
WEBINAR: LoopFuse 101 for your Sales Team
Tuesday, November 9th, 2010Thursday, November 11th, 2010 2:00PM EST
Join us for the next installment of our webinar series “Light the Fuse.” This series is intended to provide you, the LoopFuse user, valuable tips and tricks on how to use LoopFuse OneView to grow your business.
This webinar will focus on how sales team members can benefit from using LoopFuse. Tom Elrod, co-founder of LoopFuse, will walk you through the different features available as a sales user and how you can use them when following up on leads. He will give you tips along the way on how to use LoopFuse more effectively.
How will this help grow my business?
By getting both your sales and marketing teams involved with LoopFuse you can save time and resources sending information back and forth between the two departments. Visibility into your website traffic and visitors can be accessed by your sales team real-time with marketing dashboards. Individual sales representatives can set up alerts so they receive valuable information about their top prospects daily.
You will learn how to:
* Set up sales alerts so you can get real-time activity on your top prospects
* Utilize the marketing dashboards to view your target companies activity
* Implement the salesforce.com plug-in to view all your lead’s activity right in your CRM
* Use lead scores to manage which leads are the most qualified prospects
CLICK HERE to register.
Get Fused!
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth (Interview Sales)
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010If you want to know what’s happening with your customers, start with your sales team. Nobody should have a better perspective than sales. They are in constant contact with the customer and are highly compensated for their ability to establish and grow relationships.
Success in sales is tied to the ability to understand a client’s problem and translate that into a solution that can be delivered. As it so happens, that’s exactly what’s also needed for truly effective marketing. As a starting point, therefore, you need to get out there and talk to your sales team.
The Quota Carrying CMO
Monday, November 30th, 2009There is an interesting shift happening in corporate America at the moment with regards to performance evaluation of marketing departments. While I suspect that this shift may be global in nature, I have only personally witnessed it in the states and will therefore limit myself from over-reaching generalizations (seems almost quaint in the blogosphere today).
About 7 months ago I was discussing marketing automation tools in general, and LoopFuse in particular of course, with a marketing SVP and highlighting the different value propositions for the sales department versus the marketing department. Given his role, I focused my discussion primarily within the marketing side of the equation, but he repeatedly kept redirecting the conversation towards the benefits for sales. Initially I thought he was simply trying to identify any reservations or concerns that the sales VP might have by asking all of these sales-oriented questions. But as the conversation progressed I learned that this marketing SVP’s personal bonus was not tied to the traditional measures of marketing success (brand awareness, lead volume, events, etc.) but instead was based almost entirely on revenue.
At the time I considered his company’s personal performance measurement approach to be interesting, but not particularly relevant. One outlier is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern, and four is a trend. As of today I have encountered my fourth marketing executive who is primarily rewarded based on the success or failure of the sales department. At first, this approach seemed unfair to the marketing department. But as I see this trend growing I realize that almost everyone is rewarded based partially on the success or failure of others, especially at the executive levels. In this case the CMO is actually carrying the company’s global quota just like the sales executive. One potentially positive aspect of this approach is that your sales and marketing departments may find that there is significantly less friction between them because their respective leadership’s goals are now perfectly aligned.
Are you a marketing VP? Is your bonus compensation driven almost exclusively through revenue quotas? Tell us how it has impacted yourself, your team, and your organization.
