A comprehensive view of prospect/customer data is critical for effective marketing and sales. Only when you know your prospects completely can you sell effectively to them. The sales cycle today is heavily tilted in the favor of the prospect/customer. They have the means to get as much information about the product or service they are investing in, thanks to the internet and globalization. They also have a very short attention span. In order to capture prospect’s attention and hold on to it, companies and their channel partners have to adopt a hyper-personalized marketing and sales approach. This is not possible without a 360-degree view of the prospect activities and attributes. This means the organization has to have a clear 360-degree view of their customers and prospects. They need to know what the prospect is up to at any stage of the buyer’s journey so they can tweak their marketing and sales messaging and strategies accordingly. Makes sense, right? However, it is not as simple as it sounds. One of the biggest challenges that come in the way of allowing organizations to gain a holistic view of their prospects/customers is the new buyer’s journey, especially for companies in the B2B sphere that depend on channel partners.
The new buyer’s journey is scattered and complicated. It is not linear. There are multiple touchpoints through which the prospects/customers interact with the company. These interaction points are both, online and offline, so it is not easy to track all of them to get a comprehensive picture of the prospect’s journey. In the case of a B2B, channel-based sales model, the whole exercise becomes even more complicated because the company is not directly selling to the prospects and hence not in direct contact with them. It is the channel partner network that is in touch with the customers and prospects. For example, if the prospect views a brochure or visits a link on the company (vendor’s) website, the channel partner may not be aware of it. Similarly, if a prospect walks into a channel partner’s outlet, the company may not be aware of it. In such cases, the company, at the corporate level, and the channel partner, at the local level may be targeting the same prospect with different messaging that may not resonate with the prospect. It also becomes difficult to gauge the actual stage of the buyer’s journey that the prospect is at, which throws all marketing and sales efforts off-track.
Having a 360-degree view of prospects also helps corporate marketing teams focus their efforts on the right prospects, using the right tools. For example, it helps companies run effective retargeting campaigns. It helps them adopt a laser-focused approach towards prospects who are on the verge of closing, but still on the fence by approving additional discounts, which are usually not a part of the package.
Apart from the sales and marketing perspective, having a 360-degree view of prospects and clients can also help in successful cross-selling and up-selling to existing clients. It also helps organizations retain their customers and improve account management and customer engagement processes.
Having a 360-degree lead view also helps companies to segment their prospects effectively. For example, when you have comprehensive data about your lead’s activities and attributes, you can segment them based on various factors such as their persona related characteristics like title, decision-making authority, hierarchy, and also actions, like email opens, website visits, specific page visits, marketing materials downloaded, and more. This not only helps you personalize your marketing and sales approach, but when performed across the entire prospect and client database, this kind of segmentation allows you to understand your ideal prospect better. You know the profile of the ideal prospect and can target those who fit into it. In the long run, this results in better marketing and sales ROI by offering the following benefits –
- Better customer satisfaction and consequently improved customer retention rates
- Customer acquisition costs or the cost per lead comes down drastically
- Reduced ramp-to-revenue and go-to-market time frames, as marketing and sales messaging and strategies are laser-focused
- Lowered marketing and sales costs as there’s minimum efforts and maximum results
- Companies can scale their marketing and sales activities as they focus on only what matters and cut noise out, saving money and resources
- Overall quality of the prospect (lead) and client database improves, which helps corporate marketing to provide sales and channel partners with better leads, that close faster
Also, when information across all touchpoints is combined it gives the organization, its marketing/sales teams and channel partners a single, but multidimensional view of the prospect, that goes a long way in helping them be more relevant to the prospects in their buyer’s journey.
However, prospect data is often stored in silos across various systems and departments in an organization. Examples include, Corporate CRM, PoS, Marketing Automation Systems, Partner Portals, Partner CRMs, Sales Enablement Platforms, PRMs, Account Management Tools, Emails and even the not-so- “Good Old Spreadsheets”! The challenge is to combine all these information pieces and plug them in correctly to complete the prospect/customer profile, so that everybody–across the organization and its channel and sales networks has a comprehensive, 360-degree view of the prospects.
Sales and channel enablement platforms like Mindmatrix can help you overcome this challenge by providing you with a 360-degree lead visibility so you get an in-depth view of your sales funnel and the buyer’s position on the sales cycle at any time. With Mindmatrix you can-
- Get 100% visibility into the buyer’s journey
- Track lead behavior across various touch points including landing pages, social media, websites, etc.
- Know exactly what your prospects are doing—which sales email was opened, which link was clicked and what whitepaper was downloaded
- Help channel partners use insight into lead activity to approach their leads better and sell faster
