Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of align.me, writes…
While it is the stuff of frequent debates between Sales and B2B marketing professionals, this is a bit of a chicken and egg argument, because of course they’re interdependent. In B2B marketing, this means figuring out how to optimise leads regardless. Sales relationships require human contact, so even if B2B marketing automation techniques are generating a healthy flow of leads to your company – the process doesn’t stop there, (and probably didn’t start there either). So how do you know you’re doing enough chicken and enough egg?
Donna J Kent, SVP of Marketing, Sales and Services, Televerde will address this question in her second presentation at DemandCon next week. I’ve mentioned before that because Donna is a practitioner, she has some key insights into new-customer experience. Her message is this: “marketing automation is helpful, but not a panacea…The essential value of telepresence is its tandem role with digital marketing to identify, establish, validate, correct and accelerate the sales relationship and its associated sales opportunities.”
So knowing how to best manage sales and marketing as an aligned, joint effort is necessary to nurture your leads successfully. At align.me we are advocates of alignment, as we know it is needed if a company is to create and execute an effective Funnel Plan.
In our B2B Marketing Training Workshop on day 3 of DemandCon, Chuck Besondy and I will lead you through the process of building an end-to-end sales and marketing plan that helps you select tactics for every stage in the buyer’s journey and to task each tactic with a clear and measurable role.
Haven’t yet registered for the B2B Marketing Training Workshop? You can do so (and get a 15% discount!) by scrolling to the bottom of our DemandCon event information page.
Please see an update to the above in comments below.
