For a person who has spent more than two decades in sales, the idea of switching to marketing automation to drive sales might sound marshy. Salespeople believe more in the personalized touch like a phone call or a gift, so automation would be coined as ‘cold’ by them. But on the contrary, the “set it and forget it” method has eventually proved its worth more by freeing the sales people from myriad unwanted time-consuming activities.
There is a fine line between Marketing and Sales in each and every organization and there is an opportunity to blur the lines between the two and that opportunity is called ‘Pardot’!
Salesforce brings to us the next-gen B2B marketing automation tool – Pardot.
Pardot is a business-to-business automation solution available for the Salesforce users. It aids the marketers to surpass their lead generation goals and be on the same page in absolute alignment with their team, thereby empowering the sales team. In short, Pardot brings together all the favorite marketing and sales tool under a single roof. Pardot will let you witness the results at each and every stage of the sales process right from the first click to the close and beyond. Pardot and Salesforce have always been working simultaneously to ensure that not only the companies are on the cutting edge of latest marketing technologies but also have access to the top-notch customer support at every step.
How #Pardot & #Salesforce Work Together – https://t.co/jhqCFA0xEE pic.twitter.com/D3bZ27MI6a
— Salesforce Ben (@SalesforceBen) January 16, 2017
The ever happening benefits are as follows:
Enhanced Personalization
It helps in taking up a lot of manual work from your sales team onto the software platform. With automation apart from just name and location, you have got the power to capture and use data from every touchpoint. The data can range from what kind of emails they open and the kind they ignore to what time they are online and available and a lot more. The more access you have to the lead’s preferences more will be the possibility to make a personalized approach and thereby higher will be the chances to convert into a sale.
Stronger Message Approach
The number of hours an average adult consuming media has shot up to 8 hours and no doubt all the growth credit goes to the internet. So to capture a potential lead’s attention you can no longer cater to a single channel, you have to cut pierce through the noise and reinforce your message wherever they go and grab their attention. Thereby it allows you to seamlessly integrate your mail campaigns with the search campaign and social media and create a resonating impact of your message for every lead.
Lead Scoring And Warmer Leads
Lead scoring framework is highly effective and it saves a lot of valuable time which you used to lose previously on leads who will never convert. Using this tool helps you know the worth of a particular lead and the likelihood of their conversion.It also portrays the threshold clearly where the marketing should hand off a lead to the salespeople.
It is a known fact that different leads take a different amount of pursuing and time for closing deals. This software is definitely your best shot at warming up your leads no matter wherever they are positioned in the funnel. Through email marketing, you can provide more crisp content to gain their trust, engage them and thereby push them down the conversion funnel. It takes the load off the salespeople and allows them to focus more on the other aspect i.e ‘closing’.
One of the major reasons to use marketing automation was a lead qualification, but eventually, it blended into the existing CRM system and proved to be extremely helpful to prevent unqualified leads from unnecessarily clogging the CRM. It gave a concrete picture to the sales team so that they could identify the hot leads and take immediate actions. At the same time, its greatest strength was to put both the sales and marketing team on the same page. So the various ways how Salesforce uses Pardot to drive and close deals are as follows:
Lead Nurturing
This allows you take the cold leads from your Salesforce and place it on the nurturing track and you can ensure that your cold leads are better versed and educated by the time they actually communicate with a sales rep. It makes sure that your hard-earned marketing leads are not just vanished into thin air due lack of preparedness.
Streamlining Client Onboarding
With the growth of the company simultaneously it is important to have processes that could match the pace and scale the growth. The client onboarding process was identified as a major area which could be greatly enhanced via automation. It will unify the client onboarding process providing each new customer a common starting point and at the same time cut down on the maintenance expense. It can give the new clients a head start by providing them useful ‘getting started’ resources after every new account is registered.
Generating Leads At Events
One of the major favorites of marketing automation is event marketing. By making use of the Pardot forms and landing pages you can easily streamline the on-site lead generation activities. But generating leads is only half battle won and of no use unless converted. So Pardot is extremely helpful for post-event follow-ups, right from marking the hottest leads to streamlining the lead nurturing process.
Pardot can free you from the manual labor catering to lead management. With automated lead nurturing process you can help your sales rep to focus on what really matters- that is bringing new business! Transform converting leads from art to science. Track better, nurture better and beat your own revenue goals again and again.
Rererences: pardot.com, salesforce.com
Ajeet Singh
