Business Insights

“Loyal customers, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” – Chip Bell

LinkedIn isn’t the platform that it used to be. 

This article is the third in a series of four that looks at Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms. The first considered what a CRM is (and why they’re useful), the second discussed how to choose the right one. Now we’re looking at what specific CRMs offer.

Marketing and sales alignment is all about creating a seamless customer journey that guides prospects through each stage of the marketing and sales funnel. It may sound simple enough, but this can be deceptively hard to pull off.  Getting it right requires a carefully planned approach for the top, middle and bottom of your funnel. As well as knowing how you’re going to move prospects from one stage to the next. Perhaps most challenging of all, it requires sales and marketing to work closely together and be completely aligned.

Businesses with properly aligned sales and marketing teams sell far more often at a higher profit margin. When our part-time Marketing Directors arrive in a new business, they’re often asked for marketing strategies to increase sales. As they look into improving the sales process, though, they actually find that the relationship between sales and marketing isn’t as it should be.