But data is your foundation – it drives or enables everything your people do.  And it represents a lot of opportunity for you to increase productivity, reduce costs, and deliver ROI.

If you answer yes to one or more of these questions, your data represents an ROI opportunity.

1. Do your marketing attempts to measure campaign ROI break mid-stream because sales tracks a different prospect record than marketing does?
2. Do you find it hard to trust the results when you run reports?
3. Do your inside sales reps or external sales reps know they are losing productivity (their time) due to bad lead or contact level information loaded in key data fields? (info@yourowncompany.com, 999-999-9999, asdf123)?
4. Are your sales reps frustrated because they find their contacts are pursued separately by other reps?
5. Do you have trouble determining which data source you should spend more money on?
6. Do sales managers waste time trying to resolve which rep owns which account?
7. Does marketing ever launch introductory campaigns against a lead prospect, only to find sales already has an active pipeline opportunity within the same company?
8. Do you have issues with sales reps playing games to try to steal a march on their colleagues, and take ownership of a particular account by “getting there first?”
9. Do you find garbage in key data fields (info@yourowncompany.com, 999-999-9999, asdf123)?
10. Are sales reps or marketers reluctant to put their lists into the CRM because they fear repercussions, the labor involved, or worry further corrupting the database?

The post 10 Questions To Ask Yourself About Your Sales & Marketing Data Quality appeared first on The Hunley Group.

• “We need CRM technology for our sales team.”
• “I’m reluctant to invest in Marketing Automation Software (MAS); there’s so many horror stories of investments that don’t pay off.”

What I really want to hear from clients is, “I have a business process that could benefit from automation; what’s the right solution for me?” That’s because marketing and sales automation software is about using tools to leverage good business processes, not applying technology to marketing and sales functions.

First, Bad Process Automated is … Bad Process

First things first. If your business processes are not well-defined, effective, and in practice (how many companies have you encountered with great process … that they don’t use?), then get there. Need external help? Fine. But make sure process assessment and definition happens first.

Be Sure It’s about Process, Not Technology

Marketing Automation gets a lot of attention these days, well-deserved, as a potential path to increased sales effectiveness and productivity. But since most of the marketing dollars are going to promote the software, many people miss the fact that in automation of lead nurturing processes, the software is the tip of the iceberg in effort and investment. Content generation, persona definition, track generation, and monitoring / improvement of scoring effectiveness consume a lot of resources and capital.

Yes, You CAN Create New Processes Through Technology

Some functional efforts are simply not possible without appropriate sales and marketing software. If you’re planning to field a high volume of leads, you’ll struggle mightily to manage them without a CRM. If you have a moderate volume of sales pipeline candidates and you want to do a decent job of nurturing them, it’s going to be expensive and ineffective without MAS.

Some Thoughts for Planning for Success

• Apply experience to new process initiatives. Make sure you have the talent – either in-house or consultative – with the chops to know how to get this set up in practical fashion.
• Beware using the software purveyors as your point in the decision-making process. They want you to succeed by using their product, but remember they’re rewarded only if you buy their solution. Objectivity likely exceeds their grasp.
• Don’t fail in execution. Planning, design, and training are table stakes. But if you really want to see it work, commit to using the technology. A great way to ensure success in your CRM deployment, for example, is to require on deployment that all sales reps start using it exclusively – and let them know commission will be paid only on jobs in the CRM.

The post It’s about Process, Silly – Why CRMs and Marketing Automation Won’t Solve Your Problems. appeared first on The Hunley Group.