As a stand-alone strategy, marketing isn’t enough in today’s business landscape. To achieve growth and success, your marketing efforts need to work hand-in-hand with Sales and Services. This cohesive system is what Forecast Sunny refers to as RevOps and is our platform for helping companies increase profits (not just revenue) and enhance the customer journey.
There’s no doubt that a good marketing plan is essential in getting results for your business. But these days, it is not enough to have a good marketing strategy alone – you need to combine marketing with other factors such as sales and customer service to increase profit and establish online relevance. By taking this big picture approach, you can really make the most out of your overall marketing strategy.
What successful companies are doing
Successful companies in the 2020s are focusing on building long-term relationships with customers. Customers need the reassurance of knowing that someone they trust is available to connect with should they have a problem.
This bonding process begins with the customer’s first interaction with the company. They will only come back for your services if they are satisfied and decide you are trustworthy. It establishes a bond that, if maintained, can last for many years to come. So, you must guarantee the customer experience to be as smooth and pleasant as possible.
It is paramount to understand that the customer relations dynamic has changed. Your brand’s relationship with customers can no longer simply be transactional. It needs to go deeper.
Benefits of Marketing-Sales-Service working together
When you break down the walls between these previously distinct and siloed aspects of your business operations, you unlock a whole new way to engage with and delight your customers. This can be looked upon as a holistic marketing approach or what we define as RevOps.
It’s about thinking broader, looking beyond a specific transaction, and remembering every stakeholder involved. Then, incorporating each of these factors into your system.
As more and more companies begin to realize the value of this big picture approach, it’s essential to find the right partner to help you along this process. Integrated profit-building systems like ours aim to ease the pain points experienced by you and your customers.
But what are the specific benefits of Marketing, Sales, and Services working together?
Establish goals at the company level
All businesses need to establish company-wide goals that are well-defined. It allows team members to align with said goals and focus on what is important. For instance, marketing employees won’t be as concerned with vanity metrics, contributing to the company’s overall goals instead. Each department will use its skills and knowledge to move toward a common goal while enhancing communication between employees and departments.
Avoid bottlenecks, and delight customers
When every department works toward the same goal and customers are tracked from one area to the next, the bottlenecks in the customer journey are revealed and can be corrected. The purpose should be to delight the customer. Delighted customers increase revenue directly and impact prospects via positive reviews and word-of-mouth.
Customer service is usually the only sector that deals directly with the customer should a problem arise. Those who work in marketing or sales have other objectives such as sales and lead gen. But neither can achieve their objective if the customer is not satisfied with the service or product received. And that’s why these three parts must come together to form a unified whole.
Automate daily tasks
By automating these tasks, Sales and Customer Service can close more deals and build on the positive relationship established by marketing. HubSpot, for example, offers a CRM platform with a feature – Sales Hub – that allows you to automate the most tedious tasks. You can then focus on closing deals faster and more efficiently thus, lessening the friction in the customer journey and improving their perception of your brand.
Personalized conversations
With Marketing-Sales-Service working together, conversations are personalized and segmented to suit customer needs and boost sales. No one likes to feel treated as if they were just another number. So being reached through genuinely-voiced messages will promote engagement and provide opportunities for upselling and cross-selling.
Relieving burdens
Another advantage of these three sectors working together is that Marketing can take quite a burden off the shoulders of other departments such as Sales. These departments can then focus on what they do best, for example, closing a sale.
Marketing is responsible for understanding the customer and presenting the product or Service as attractively as possible, while Sales is in charge of closing the transaction. If anything were to happen, Service is there to answer customers’ queries. The Service department is usually the face of your company when the customer encounters a problem. So, lessening their burden by breaking down barriers will create a more rested, more productive team.
Customer Service Insights
Insights gathered through Service are incorporated into marketing and sales. This valuable data allows Marketing and Sales to focus on the actual customers rather than lead funnel and click data when adjusting their efforts.
RevOps: An inbound marketing growth philosophy
RevOps (Revenue Optimization) takes the principles of holistic marketing and puts them into concrete and actionable terms.
Traditionally, business departments operated in silos, with separate missions, unconnected customer experiences, and disjointed analytics. In theory, one hand was unaware of what the other was doing, resulting in money being left on the table.
Revenue Optimization arose from a few basic truths.
- In the commercial world, marketing technology has become increasingly significant
- The management of Marketing, Sales, and Service operations needed to be more efficient and harmonized
- More connection and customization at scale were required for a better client experience
All of these problem areas arose as a result of customer experience discontinuities, operational inefficiencies, and a lack of visibility into the business’s bottlenecks and revenue-generating potential.
RevOps, when effectively applied, can help a company reinvent internal operations, increase client acquisition, empower client delight, and develop a revenue/profit-driven company culture.
Consider the possibility that revenue isn’t simply a result of excellent service or product. Instead, revenue is generated by your Marketing, Sales, and Service teams working together as a single powerful growth team.
CRM: a RevOps essential
What is a CRM?
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform stores information on current and potential customers and their activities and points of contact with the company.
The platform is not just an elaborate contact list: it gathers and integrates valuable data to prepare and update your teams with personal customer information, history, and purchasing preferences.
A CRM platform:
- Actively tracks and manages customer information
- Connects your entire team on any device
- Intelligently captures customer emails
- Simplifies repetitive tasks so you can track leads more effectively
- Provides instant recommendations and insights
- Expand and personalize as your business grows
Why You Should Implement a CRM in your company
A CRM helps your company distribute outdated processes and manual effort so that your business can move forward. The platform organizes accounts and contacts in an accessible, real-time manner, speeding up and simplifying the sales process.
- Find more leads, close more business, retain more customers and start expanding your business with increased sales revenue
- Your conversations are always personal, relevant and up-to-date, generating an increase in customer satisfaction
- Companies report up to 43% improvement in marketing ROI with the use of CRM
We are your RevOps resource
At Forecast Sunny, we have a comprehensive system that delivers on the promise of holistic marketing. Not only will you gain access to our team of RevOps professionals, but you will gain access to the HubSpot CRM and all-in-one platform through a HubSpot Partner Agency.