Sales and Marketing Automation: Easy as 1, 2, 3

Tom Sanders, President, Business Development Advisors
September 3, 2010

Today, quality data and a good sales and marketing automation program go hand in hand. (After all, a CRM and the latest and greatest marketing automation tool are not of much value if the data is poor.) It used to be that sales and marketing automation was only for larger companies, with equally larger budgets. However, the rise of available technology solutions means there are many affordable options for companies of any size and budget.

How to choose the best solution?
All solutions are not created equal - they have different features, functions and benefits. Additionally, a tool does not provide the expected value if you do not have the right data, process and goals in place. Here are a few tips on finding a "right-fit" solution.

1. Assess current sales processes and strategies
Once an assessment of current sales and marketing strategies and processes has been performed, define short- and long-term goals and create a path to achieve them. Determine what has and has not been working. Immediately stop activities that are not. Also, look at areas that can be improved. This is a great opportunity to improve and align processes. This assessment will provide a foundation on which to build a roadmap to achieve new sales and marketing goals.

Use this roadmap to optimize the CRM by:
• identifying and building out the key data fields and rule-based workflows into the CRM; and
• creating marketing workflows, sales triggers, reports and dashboards.

2. Data population and clean-up
Whether a firm's data is old, new or virtually nonexistent, it is important to assess current data to identify potential duplicates and outdated contacts, leads and accounts. Develop a plan to ensure relevant activity history or contact information is not deleted. Some key factors to consider when cleaning up a CRM include:
• identifying and mapping information into the CRM that may be utilized for segmentation such as hospital bedside, quality score, etc. ; and
• backing up original information during the data import process.

3. Marketing automation tool selection
With all of the tools out there today, it can be hard to choose which one will best fit a company's needs.
• Use the assessment roadmap created in step one to determine solution needs. It is important that it will work with a chosen CRM, since that is where data, reporting, etc., is stored.
• Determine the budget for an automation tool. The good news is the tools are becoming more and more affordable.
• Begin researching tools and view demos.
• Narrow down the list, and perform test drives of top choices.

Most marketing automation vendors will offer a trial period to test drive their solutions. Before committing to a specific tool, use the system in a real-world setting. As part of the selection, ask the vendor of choice to commit to a 90-day trial. Most tools can be utilized outside of a CRM and tested with a smaller segment of proprietary data. This will provide better insight into how the tool works before integrating into the CRM and sales and marketing process.

When a certain comfort level is reached, let the negotiations begin. There are a lot of great choices out there.

Guest blogger Tom Sanders is president of Business Development Advisors, a consulting company specializing in assisting businesses focused on selling within the healthcare industry develop end-to-end sales and marketing solutions. Specifically, we help our clients focus on improving processes, sales and marketing automation and CRM optimization.

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