Sales and Marketing Alignment Explained

Capitalize on the new buyer’s journey by aligning sales and marketing.

Help your business grow!

Discover the advantages of making your sales and marketing work together.

A huge part of the buying decision is made before your customer reaches out to your brand or meets your sales team. What does that mean for your sales department? Learn more about recent changes in the customer’s buying journey and explore the benefits of aligning your sales and marketing departments. Configure your sales process to match this new buying landscape.

In this ebook, you learn:

The powerful benefits of aligning your sales and marketing efforts
How and why the buyer’s journey is changing
How to take control of the front end of your sales pipeline

Download this free ebook and learn how buying decisions are made – and how you can be there at the right time.

The fact is, for each day that your sales and marketing departments are out of alignment, your business is haemorrhaging money. And lots of it… Here’s some proof…

Pipeline Management: Success with CRM

Pipeline management means the difference between accurate, successful sales and hit-or-miss sales that mysteriously make it to the close or don’t. Pipeline management therefore even affects the success or failure of a company, and the attainment of company goals.

This ebook shows you the relationship between pipeline management and sales success, as well as the vital role played by the choice of CRM solution.

Chapter 1: Pipeline Management: The Backbone of Your Enterprise

Much has been written (and spoken of) regarding the need for an accurate sales process – also known as sales pipeline management. Companies generally fall into a rough range of possibilities with regard to pipeline management.

Chapter 2: Pipeline Management: Critical to Attaining Company Goals

What may not be clear until you take a closer look is the fact that accurate and effective pipeline management is essential to the attainment of long-term company goals. For that reason, pipeline management might also be called “opportunity management.”

Chapter 3: Pipeline Management: A Self-Sustaining Success

Laying out the separate steps of the sales process and making sure they are followed is the only way of bringing control to sales, both for the salespeople and sales management. If played right, pipeline management is also a self-sustaining success.

Chapter 4: Pipeline Management: The Vital Importance of Automation

When allocating a budget in an enterprise, automation often takes somewhat of a back seat to other matters. While the causes for this are many and varied, we will not attempt to examine them here, but simply demonstrate the vital importance of IT support for one crucial activity: sales pipeline management.

Chapter 5: CRM and Booming Your Company

Automated tools for CRM have been around in one form or another since the advent of computers. CRM today goes well beyond simple contact management, however, and if intelligently utilized can help steer an enterprise into whole new levels of profitability.

Chapter 6: Where CRM Can Go Wrong

CRM can and often does become almost more of a hindrance than a workable solution. Why does this occur, and what can be done about it?

Download Pipeline Management: Success with CRM now.

Pipeliner CRM Features and Functionality: Philosophy Into Action

All of Pipeliner CRM’s features express sound business philosophy–and are designed to totally empower your sales force

Features and Functionality: Philosophy Meets the Real World

In our previous 2 ebooks, Theory Made Real and Reducing Risk, we demonstrated how Pipeliner CRM is the sum total, in the real world, of sound philosophical business principles. Theory Made Real explored the 6 basic principles that form the foundation for Pipeliner, with examples of how they are expressed in the product. Reducing Risk laid out the Pipeliner Selling System, which follows the basic pattern of a sales process against the backdrop of the buyer’s journey, and how this, too, embodies the basic principles.

In this our third ebook in the series, we explore all the specific Pipeliner CRM features—many of which are totally unique in the CRM market—and how each of these reflects the philosophy which inspired it.

Our goal with this book is to bring the reader an understanding of the power that Pipeliner can bring to a sales organization and business, and also to provide a continuing overview of the applicable principles on which any business is based.

Stage 1: Focus

The first stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Focus, deals with:

Focusing reps on deals that matter
Honing in on specific aspects of the deals themselves
Focusing the buyer in on your solution

Under the heading of Focus are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

Dynamic Contact Management
Effective, Efficient Leads Management
Pipeline View: Visual Key to Your Processes
Your Instant, Visual Sales Timeline
Archive: Understanding the Past is Key to Your Future
Pipeliner CRM Profiles: It’s Your View
Template Designer: It Really Is Your CRM
Pipeliner CRM’s Built-In Help

Stage 2: Engage

The second stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Engage, means reaching out and touching this prospect, getting involved with their particular company and issues, and accomplishing the actions necessary to move them to the next stage toward a sale.

Under the heading of Engage are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

Sales Activities—Your Path to Sales Success
Social Selling Made Easy
Tracking Sales Efficiency: Pipeliner Hit Rate Manager
Online or Offline: Full CRM Functionality
Notes Management and Integration
Apps Integrations
Pipeliner App Integrations
Auto-Profiling: Saving Hours of Admin Work
History Log: Tracking Changed Data in CRM
Sales Reports: See More to Sell More

Stage 3: Convince

At the third stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Convince, you are convincing the buyer—and all decision-makers and influencers at the company acting as evaluators—that purchasing your product or service is absolutely the right thing to do. It is at this stage that the sale is made.

Under the heading of Convince are the Pipeliner CRM features contained in this chapter:

The Pipeliner Task Board: A New Way to Work
Dynamic Target: Constant Focus
Smart Org Chart & Buying Center
Filters: Zeroing In on Deals That Count
Getting a Handle on Sales Velocity
Sales Dashboards—Insights On Demand
Customized Auto-Calculations
Sales Document Management
Microsoft Office Plug-In

Stage 4: Close and Cooperate

At the fourth stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Close, your buyer has become a customer. Ultimately your aim is to move that customer into the next and final stage of the Pipeliner Selling System, Cooperate. At that point your customer has become an advocate—and is much more of a partner than a customer.

There are 2 final features that are particularly applicable to the Close and Cooperate stages of the Pipeliner Selling System:

Multiple Pipelines
Bulk Update Feature

Opportunity Management

Qualifying a lead might be a relatively simple task, but opportunity management is a bit more complex. Why? The stakes are higher: a salesperson is now going to invest valuable time into working the opportunity. It has the real potential of becoming what everyone in the sales force is after: a closed sale.

Everyone is betting that this opportunity will pay off, but there is always that risk factor. Not all sales close. Will this one turn to profit, or become expensively wasted effort? How can the odds be improved in favor of your sales force and your company?

The essential key to opportunity management is accurately evaluating the risk factors. That is, knowing all about your target prospect company—at the very least understanding the industry and how most companies within it operate. Knowing which employees within a company are vital to engage as part of the selling process; having an understanding of your target company’s buying process; and of course knowing all the qualifying questions to ask before you invest serious time and effort.

Chapter 1: Sales Techniques – Opportunity Management

Qualifying a lead is relatively simple. Opportunity management, however, is a bit more complex. The stakes are higher: a salesperson is now going to invest valuable time into working the opportunity, engaging key people at the target company, making presentations, and utilizing all possible sales techniques.

Chapter 2: Sales Strategies and Opportunity Management: Knowing the Buyer

The key component of all sales strategies is opportunity management. And the key element of opportunity management is evaluating risk—having as much information as possible to outweigh the possibility of the sale becoming a loss.

Chapter 3: Sales Techniques: Sales Rep Flexibility

The time has come to let salespeople utilize their “on the ground” judgment and sales techniques when it comes to making various decisions about opportunity management. Selling today requires flexibility, judgment, and a focus on results—not process.

Chapter 4: Sales Strategies: Analysis of Lost Opportunities

If sales management or even members of the sales force can statistically analyze past losses as part of opportunity management, such analysis can yield plentiful data that is helpful to the creation of new sales strategies, helpful to the improvement of closing ratios and helpful to taking time out of sales cycles.

Chapter 5: 6 Vital Qualities of a CRM Solution in Opportunity Management

A CRM solution is crucial both to the operation of a sales force and, factually, of a business itself. But as a sale travels further up the pipeline, the precision of that CRM application increases in importance. By the time you’re well into opportunity management—that stage of a sale in which a sales rep is heavily engaged—your CRM solution had better be fully supportive or you run the risk of losing those opportunities.

Chapter 6 Sales Techniques: The Viewing of Opportunities

While the handling of sales opportunities is a technical subject that we explore in some detail, there is an underlying factor that affects any salesperson’s opportunity management: the way an opportunity is viewed.

Download our ebook Opportunity Management now.

Metrics and the Art of Sales

Is Sales an Art or a Science

It’s an age-old argument that still persists today: is sales an art or a science? The old timers will firmly argue the former, and the modern-day salesperson armed with the latest smartphone and steeped in technology will often argue the latter. But the truth is, that both are true for a sales force – but only in the right combination.

A sales rep today is armed with plentiful technological assistance. But he or she still must be able to rapidly relate to a prospect and engender trust, know when to pitch and when to hold back, and be able to read the prospect well to ascertain when to go in for that close or when to address other issues.

The job is far easier with the pattern of an agreed-upon sales process, an intuitive CRM solution, and instant access to an infinite amount of data through the web – but in the end it is still ability and skill that will bring the sale finally to its close. A sales force operates with both art and science. A skillful combining of the two will mean steadily increasing sales for your company.

Make the Metrics of Sales Work For You

Managing a reliable sales process is undoubtedly one of the most important functions of a sales leader. All you need to do is gather the data, right?

In actuality it is not enough to rely on sales process metrics alone. Those metrics must also have context — and especially a relationship to each other so you can put them to work for you. In this eBook you will learn:

How sales process metrics have changed over the last decade
How to measure each and every step of the sales process
How to understand and leverage the context of your sales process metrics

Download this free eBook and and discover some great tools for effective sales process measurement and control.

A good part of the reason you want a sales process is so you can actually view and measure the progress of sales as they go along, and monitor sales rep performance. Without a sales process, the only real measure of success you have is the total number of sales closed and the total dollar figures.

1. Is the Sales Force Running on Art…or Science?

In the end it can be seen that a sales force is operating with both art and science. A skillful combining of the two will mean steadily increasing sales for your company.

2. 4 Ways to an Accurate Sales Process

If you look back through business history, the evolution of the sales process was an attempt to adapt the methodologies of manufacturing or computing to sales. Essentially you have certain inputs that go through a specific process; given the same inputs and the same process you should end up with the same results every time.

3. Sales Force Automation and ROI

Due to these considerably reduced costs, it would seem that the question of rapid ROI has been solved – or has it? Taking a closer look, it will be found that evaluating CRM ROI is just as important as it ever was, perhaps even more so. It just has a different set of factors necessary for evaluation than it once did.

4. Sales Process Metrics: Know Your Context

Take the one final step and understand the full context of sales process metrics – and raise the number of closes consistently into the future.

5. Sales Process: Measuring “Now” Versus “Then”

You need to be able to accurately measure progress through each step of the sales process (sales pipeline) in order to fully control and predict sales. Additionally such measures have to show what’s happening now as opposed to only reviewing what happened last quarter or last year.

6. CRM Solutions: The Sales Force and Beyond

A flexible, intuitive CRM solution is crucial for a sales force to survive, let alone succeed. But that same carefully chosen and well-implemented CRM application is just as important to other key company departments whose input comes before and after sales.

Maximizing the ROI of CRM

Because a CRM solution is such an integral part of your company’s operation, precisely establishing ROI for CRM is vital. In taking the time to do so, you are also taking the time to fully support and empower your sales efforts for years to come.

This simple guide will put you firmly on track to evaluate CRM ROI for your company–and choose the CRM solution that meets those criteria.

Chapter 1: 3 Steps to CRM Solution ROI

ROI (return on investment) is normally part of every proposal for a software purchase. For a CRM solution, a full ROI statement should not be skimped, and should be given considerably more time and effort than other software purchases.

Chapter 2: CRM Solution ROI: Why Mirror Your Sales Process?

One vital key to getting the most ROI from your CRM solution is to ensure your CRM application mirrors your sales process. Today there is every reason for CRM to mirror a sales process and to gain rapid ROI for a CRM solution—and there exist CRM solutions that make it very easy.

Chapter 3: CRM Solution ROI: Fully Know Before You Go

When CRM solution ROI falls short, it’s because of a failure to gather information from every sector of the company and every individual who will be engaged with CRM, finding out exactly what they would need in a CRM solution, and assessing ROI for each of these areas.

Chapter 4: For True ROI, a CRM Solution Must Be the One You Really Need

Before any particular CRM application has been decided upon, you must consult with anyone and everyone within the company that will have any interaction with CRM at all. You must establish for each what a CRM solution would need to be. Summed up, you will then have a company-wide perspective on the ideal CRM solution for your operation.

Chapter 5: CRM Solution ROI: It Starts with the Sales Force

Often inadequately researched is the impact a CRM application will have on the sales force, along with the potential (considerable) ROI that can be obtained from making the right choice for Sales.

Chapter 6: CRM Solution ROI – It Should Begin with Startup

With a startup, CRM ROI might not seem to be the most important issue to address. Selling product and obtaining clients may appear to be the one and only mandate. But in actuality there is no more crucial time to conclusively figure out CRM ROI than right at the beginning of the life of a business.

Download Maximizing the ROI of CRM now.

10 Reasons Why Salespeople Will Always Be Absolutely Essential: The Printable Poster

Salespeople Are Genuinely Invested in Their Companies’ Doing Well

The Pipeliner CRM blog post by sales expert Tony Hughes inspired this poster.

In the post, Hughes contends that free enterprise selling makes the world a safer and more tolerant place. He argues that selling connects people, exchanges ideas, and improves the way everything is done in the world.

The poster celebrates the idea that selling causes us to understand other people and their cultures, values and beliefs, but in a way where we have empathy rather than judgment.

The poster focuses on how:

Salespeople drive our economy.
Salespeople display unique, valuable attributes.
Salespeople inspire positive social change.

Download this poster and join us in celebrating Tony Hughes’ passionate words! Put it on your wall for all to see!

Build the Best Lists Ever! A RingLead Downloadable eBook

Today, contact data can be more targeted, specific, and useful than ever before. Make data work for you!

Gone are the days of building lists out of the yellow pages

Today, the contact data available can be more targeted and specific than ever before. This free downloadable RingLead ebook sets out the steps necessary to build complete, clean lists, including:

Planning your lists — best practices
Creating targeted niche lists
Tracking emerging companies in specific markets
Segmenting larger sectors or lists

Good list building affects all aspects of business, including the funnel and pipeline. With today’s technology and this ebook you have the ability to gather an entire market, and then slice it, dice it, segment it — and go out and attack it.

Download from RingLead