Marketing Automation- Not Just An Initiative For Marketers

As a salesperson traditionally focused on digital marketing, I'm no stranger to having conversations with marketers- and a key take away from those conversations is that the average marketer is pestered by similar worries. Consistently I hear questions as to how to boost specific key performance indicators such as website traffic, social reach, inbound leads, quantity/quality of marketing qualified leads, email/blog subscribers, and engagement.  While these KPI's are inherently important, and while marketing automation certainly helps bolster them, I hope to impress upon others in sales and sales management that marketing automation's impact can be felt within their departments just as conclusively(sometimes more resoundingly even).

Consistently sales pushes marketing automation out to the marketing side of the organization, as an initiative to be spearheaded by them- and yes, a marketing automation platform houses content, automated logic, email, database management, segmentation, reporting and analytics(all tools for marketers I'll admit).  However, a marketing automation platform effectively tied into a CRM also provides sales a means for spearheading engagement.  Consider this- once a salesperson is presented by a view such as the one below, they are suddenly presented a window into the world of their marketing department, and are afforded full insight into why their prospect is not only worth talking to, but how they became fully informed about the brand, and when they became ready to be contacted- 

A prospect is in this light not just another scored lead, but rather an actionable engagement for sales(and a warm one at that!).

In the same light, once marketing has cookied and identified a marketing qualified lead, if a salesperson is able then to delineate which of their prospects are viewing content and when, they can work in conjunction with marketing's efforts- viewing prospect engagement as it occurs.  It's hardly a boon to have marketing silo'd away from sales, and visibility in this way can bridge that gap. 

As a final example, it's been my experience that the communication from sales and marketing differs in the eyes of a prospective customer- now picture sales people sending follow-up correspondence directly from their CRM-

And within said emails, including content and verbiage templated by marketing to maintain clean and concise communication-

Perhaps even going so far as to load their own prospect into one of marketing's nurturing campaigns-

My point is this-

As marketing endeavors to increase awareness, branding, retention, etc- sales works tirelessly to boost their own KPI's, average deal size, average closing cycle, opportunity to close rate, etc- which also happen to be immediately impacted by sales having actionable content on their side of the house(and more efficient communication with marketing).  I posit that marketing and sales intiatives are both tied to marketing automation- and hope to have more calls with marketers where the sales side of the house presses to be included!