Ed Marsh, Management consultant and top line growth advisor to B2B manufacturing firms, publishes eBook with 21 tips to improve sales results with latent technology
BOSTON, MA, 11 January, 2016
Consilium Global Business Advisors announced today the publication of a new eBook “Turning a Marketing Automation Resource info a Revenue Growth Driver: Harvesting the latent power of existing technology to drive top line growth for industrial manufacturers.”
As industrial manufacturing companies gradually adopt marketing automation, most are only leveraging a very small portion of the commonly recognized capability. According to recent research, of the 19% of B2B companies that have implemented marketing automation, only 37% even use the tools to personalize follow up.
As a result, barriers to top line growth persist. These include weak lead generation, missing lead nurturing, lack of alignment between sales & marketing, and dissonant buying journeys vs. sales processes. Those compound at each step - negatively impacting top line growth.
“Marketing automation provides a tool set which is falsely understood to be the domain of B2B marketing.” says Marsh, a management consultant for middle marketing industrial manufacturing firms. “Even the best practices fail to leverage the potential for marketing automation to empower sales with critical insights and information - beyond the more common lead generation and management capabilities.”
Many companies adopt rudimentary forms of marketing automation to engage with internet leads and apply some lead scoring methodology to determine which are ready for sales engagement. Advances in the technology, though, mean that every lead interaction can be contextually personalized - from the text of the mails they receive to what they see on web pages during return visits. The step change opportunity lies in latent potential of the technology to deliver detailed buyer insight and sales coaching, contextually and automatically, to field sales reps - and even their management.
Marsh continues, “The SaaS companies that developed marketing automation tend to have technically connected inside sales forces that naturally consume buyer insights which are captured by marketing automation. The industrial field sales world is different though. These tools can put the critical buyer insights in the hands of field sales reps who aren’t cloud connected - and provide simultaneous coaching and recommendations based on nuanced prospect insights.”
Often just as the name “marketing” tends to reinforce an arbitrary limit to the application, the organization ownership limits the perspective its implementation. Industrial marketers own the lead generation, and toss leads over a silo wall to sales. This organizational structure inherently limits the higher level perspective necessary to leverage the real revenue growth power of marketing automation.
This automation approach represents a scaleable top-line growth capability that improves marketing and sales alignment. Most importantly, though, it proactively puts the analytical and contextual power of modern digital marketing tools in the hands of industrial field sales forces that have traditionally been slow to adopt tools which proposed to provide that insight on demand.
“This completely shifts the burden - from a sales force that’s often dubious and resistant, to a marketing automation system. They have the info they need, when they need it, with embedded coaching and insights. It’s a huge potential enabler of top line growth for industrial manufacturers.”
The new eBook is available for free download. In eight simple to read pages it lays out the critical field sales revenue growth challenge posed by changing buyer behaviors. From the evolving definition of a “lead” to the challenge of sales and marketing alignment in today’s buyer driven world it presents the context in which these tools can empower growth. Then, after defining marketing automation and exploring traditional imitations, it contrasts typical vs. best practice implementations. Finally, recognizing the role of distribution and reps in industrial sales, it explores how enhanced marketing automation can empower greater channel effectiveness as well.
About Consilium Global Business Advisors: Consilium assists American manufacturers in applying process excellence to their business development. In other words we help lean, well managed companies with rock solid bottom lines effectively and consistently grow their top lines to match. We work primarily with mid-size industrial manufacturing companies, guiding them through a journey of designing and executing business grade B2B inbound marketing and focused, profitable global market expansion.
