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Purge Your CRM

Purge Your CRM: Unmasking the Spooky Secrets Lurking in Your Data

Welcome to a Halloween-themed journey through the mysteries of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system! It’s no secret how important a well-functioning CRM is to your business, but do you ever get the eerie feeling that something is amiss within it? We’ll explore five chilling challenges that cause problems for your whole team, haunting the day-to-day operations. With a few practical solutions, you’ll be well-prepared to banish these dementors and enjoy a smooth and efficient data management experience. Let’s purge your CRM!

The Phantom Data Entry

Do phantom records plague your CRM? Duplicate entries, missing information, and data inconsistencies can frighten you. These ghoulish errors don’t just waste time; they can lead to costly mistakes and a prolonged sales cycle. Implementing rigorous data entry protocols is the key to fighting these data monsters. Have a plan in place on how you input data into your system and also how you update and maintain it. This way, your CRM will be free from the ghostly grip of bad data.

The Poltergeist of Poor Integration

Have you ever experienced the hair-raising frustration of incompatible software? Data silos and miscommunication can be as disruptive as a mischievous poltergeist. They cause delays in important communications and likely cost your business customers. To put these integration issues to rest, consider comprehensive CRM integrations. You could implement a third-party API integration tool or work with a developer to build a custom backend solution. Seamlessly connecting your tech stack will ensure a smooth data flow and scare off all inefficiencies. 

The Zombie Accounts

Are there accounts that seem to be stuck in perpetual limbo, never progressing? These zombie accounts can drain your resources (sales reps’ time!) and weigh down your sales pipeline. To breathe new life into them, devise personalized nurturing strategies that utilize a series of targeted messages. The goal here is to be creative and resourceful in how your team can efficiently connect with potential buyers. Don’t be afraid to test personalized messages at different intervals to optimize response. Re-engaging with dormant leads can eventually turn them into valuable clients who are more Laura Croft and less Walking Dead. 

The Curse of Inefficient Workflows

Inefficient workflows are like the house that hands out toothpaste to trick-or-treaters on Halloween – it prevents your team from having fun (productive). Identifying bottlenecks, automating repetitive tasks, and streamlining processes are the main avenues that will free your team from these shackles. Even though your team may be very busy, be sure to include key stakeholders in this critical mission. Doing so will ensure that your CRM is no longer haunted by time-consuming and frustrating workflow issues, thereby empowering your team to focus on strategic tasks.

The Specter of Analytics Paralysis

Are you drowning in a sea of data, unable to make sense of it all? The specter of analytics paralysis can really be overwhelming. Not only does this limit the insights your team is able to compile, but it’s also likely means you’re missing relevant data points hidden within the mess. Now is the perfect time to simplify your reporting, take advantage of data visualization techniques, and make data insights more accessible. As a team, make a push to clean up the reports you’re using and determine the specific information that is really useful in evaluating performance. Organizing your data can banish the chilling effect of information overload and ensure that your CRM becomes a valuable source of insights.

Keep Calm and Maximize On

Don’t let the lingering phantoms of CRM issues spook your revenue operations any longer. This Halloween season, embark on a mission to uncover and resolve the problems that may be haunting your system. From ghostly data entry to mischievous integrations and even zombie accounts, each challenge has a solution. As your team addresses these problems, you’ll realize improvements in how the group operates, so take the first steps to ensure a more productive, data-driven, and efficient future for your business. Bid farewell to the CRM ghosts and enjoy a fright-free experience as you explore the possibilities that await.

Schedule your free consultation to see how Revenue Ops LLC can help you exorcise your CRM today. Happy Halloween!

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Boost Your Business: A Mid-Year CRM Check

Boost Your Business: A Mid-Year CRM Check

Hey there, fellow business trailblazers! Can you believe summer is almost over, and pumpkin spice lattes are just around the corner? Now it’s time to boost your business and ensure your Salesforce system is ready to tackle the rest of the year. As a revenue operations team, we developed a simple guide to help you perform a CRM check that will put your business on the path to success! 

Data: Clean and Green

Clean data needs to be the foundation of your tech stack. You have to trust what your reports are saying, and data within your systems should correlate and pass seamlessly from one system to another. Duplicate and incomplete data can find its way into your instance in many ways. Yet, no matter how it gets there, you must do something about it. A system that identifies and eliminates these pesky duplicates, like duplicate management rules in your CRM, creates reliable data for effective reporting and forecasting across systems.

Customizations: Tailor-Made Solutions

Customize your CRM to fit your unique business needs. A CRM is generally a pricy part of your tech stack, so it should be set up in a way that works best for your team’s processes. For example, picture yourself running a subscription-based service. Your mid-year analysis reveals a chance to automate the subscription renewal process with custom workflows. This time-saving enhancement ensures that nothing falls through the cracks while your team enjoys the benefit of reduced manual efforts.

User Adoption: Engage and Thrive

Encourage your team to embrace Salesforce to its full potential. Consider, for example, a growing marketing agency that uses Salesforce.com (SFDC) to streamline lead management, among other things. In a recent systems check, they found sales members hesitant to embrace the new CRM because they had lingering questions about the lead qualification process. 

Organizing interactive training and feedback sessions and showcasing the benefits of your CRM to the sales team can spark enthusiasm for how efficient the sales process can be within the CRM. A few advantages of a well-organized CRM system are automation, lead qualification, and activity capture. Incorporating the team’s ideas and input will make them feel like they’ve contributed to a meaningful part of the prospect journey. 

Metrics: Power Your Growth

The very fact that your CRM collects and organizes customer information means it’s holding robust data your business needs to take advantage of. As mentioned previously, the first step is ensuring the numbers tell an accurate story. From there, you should harness the power of data-driven insights. For example, you might use the native CRM reporting feature to focus on closed lost deals and their lead source or create custom forecasts that allow your sales managers to understand when and where they will realize revenue. The possibilities are endless, so be creative and use your data.

Security: Protect Your Fortunes

Safeguard your data as if it were treasure because it is. Security means that not all your data must be accessible to your entire company. It would be best if you established boundaries and unique permission sets. 

Consider a financial services company using Salesforce to manage client portfolios. During a recent security review, they unearthed a potential vulnerability – some users had unnecessary access to sensitive financial data and personally identifiable information (PII). By tightening access controls, improving the profile and role settings, and implementing two-factor authentication, they can shield their clients’ interests and protect their data against potential threats.

We’re Here to Help

Your CRM system holds the keys to how efficiently your team can operate. It sits at the center of your organization and demands careful planning and execution. We encourage you to go through the CRM check tactics in this guide and take the necessary steps to apply them to improve your sales operations. 

Navigating the Salesforce landscape might be overwhelming, but you can do it with some professional help. You have a trusted partner with years of experience with Revenue Ops LLC. If you have questions or want to talk, contact our consultants today.

 
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CRM is Critical to Effective Revenue Optimization

CRM is Critical to Effective Revenue Optimization

  • Ben Doran, Revenue Operations Consultant

Effective revenue optimization means that your business is doing everything possible to increase revenue. It starts with thoroughly analyzing your data – sales, marketing, customer experience, etc. Then moves to a rollout of new tactics and strategies based on the improvements identified during the discovery. 

The idea is that your team pulls out all the stops to bring more money in the door. The responsibility doesn’t just fall on the sales team; it’s an approach that should include all functional departments.

The CRM Factor

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) originated from the need to store information on potential and current customers. For the most part, it was a glorified spreadsheet that the sales team primarily used. While customer data storage is still one of its principal purposes, the technology has evolved to accomplish much more. Modern CRM systems can break down information silos, connect departments, and provide real-time reports on customer trends. It’s a tool that lives at the center of your organization, which every team member can access and leverage. CRM is a crucial component for revenue growth when implemented and managed effectively. 

CRM Criteria

Your CRM should fit like a bespoke suit; it must fulfill your operational requirements and complement your organizational value propositions. Nowadays, how a company provides a product or service is more important than what it sells or provides. So, it’s helpful to customize your CRM system to fit your unique processes and workflows. These are a few attributes that we look for in an effective CRM system:

Interconnected

You should be able to integrate the essential applications your company relies on with your CRM. Connecting your applications saves countless hours of toggling back and forth and provides comprehensive real-time reporting efficiently, among other benefits.

We like to think of the CRM as the hub of the technology system, with other technology, like your marketing automation platform and sales enablement systems, acting as the spokes of a wheel.

Easy to use

Ideally, a CRM streamlines your business processes and presents a clear path for selling your products and services while managing daily operations. However, the system’s efficacy largely depends on its setup and the functions applied. Underutilization will be counterproductive, so you should take advantage of as many of the system’s features as necessary.

Regulated

Your CRM should facilitate a way to administer the system efficiently. Managing users and privileges should be relatively easy. In addition, automating processes should be a fundamental function of the system. Data validation rules and other advanced security features would also be helpful.

Choosing a CRM

Whether you’re finally deciding to move off of Google Sheets or just looking to expand or upgrade your CRM technology, you must consider these factors during your decision process:

Growth

Scalability is an important consideration where technology is concerned. You not only need to think about your present circumstances but your future plans as well. And growth applies to both business sales and users. Ideally, your selected CRM system will expand and evolve with the business.

Price 

Obviously, a robust CRM system can be costly, but hopefully, the returns make the investment worthwhile. Usually, the more advanced functions, automation capabilities, and native integrations the system offers, the more you will pay. In addition to the software costs, there will likely be startup and development costs to migrate and implement existing data and frameworks. 

System Demands

Make sure the tool you choose fits your current process. Getting caught up in all the upgrades and integrations is easy, but you’ll just be frustrated and upset if you don’t use them. It’s best to start simple, satisfy current needs, and build from there. 

Effectively Optimize Your Revenue

Effective revenue optimization is crucial for growth and business sustainability. With that comes the need for a CRM tailored to your unique needs. Hopefully, the above points encourage your team to look intensely at your current tech stack and provide you with some tools to start thinking about the next phase of CRM development or how to evaluate a potential change for your organization properly. When done correctly, a well-implemented CRM system will be the lynchpin to help your organization make data-driven decisions and help you optimize your revenue.

Revenue Ops LLC is an experienced team of sales, marketing, and customer success professionals committed to helping clients improve performance. The ultimate goal is to streamline workflows so our clients can make data-driven decisions that maximize revenue. We apply our deep knowledge of CRM systems like Salesforce and sales enablement tools like Salesloft to optimize sales potential by stimulating and tracking customer interactions.

Are you looking for some help and guidance through this process? Our certified consultants are ready to talk with you!

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The Benefits a FinTech and CRM Integration

The Benefits of a FinTech and CRM Integration

Blind spots cause problems. Not just while you’re driving but while you’re trying to navigate the information superhighway. How can you decide where to go when you don’t have the correct data? How can you avoid an accident if you can’t see what’s hiding out of sight?

Integrating your financial technology (FinTech) system with your customer relationship management (CRM) system is critical to get a 360-degree view of your clients and all their interactions with your company. And not just their financial exchanges but all their actions overall.

Did they call customer service? What products have they purchased lately? What is the Lifetime Customer Value? These are critical questions to consider when making the best decisions on how to move the business forward.

FinTech and CRM Together

An incomplete picture of your business is both unhelpful and potentially dangerous. The lack of clarity means your decision-making is missing something. How do you actually know your growth is sustainable? Are you making decisions based on reality or your perception of reality? 

These questions highlight the importance of having clean data in one place – particularly within your financial numbers. Accurate and centralized data creates easy access to real-time insights and breaks down the typical info silos among departments. The best way to do this is to integrate your FinTech and CRM, in addition to all of your other corporate sales and marketing technology. That way, you can see a comprehensive picture of your entire sales and marketing funnel through the retention process and analyze both pre-sale and post-sale metrics to see what’s working and what’s not.

Integrations help us to connect the data from these disparate systems into a unified platform so that we can analyze the data and create a single source of truth upon which we base our business decisions. As a result, everyone evaluates the same data in a single system, thereby eliminating the need for manual manipulation and making it possible to create data visualizations that tell the story about what’s happening in the business through the data.

Integration Options

There are a few different integration options depending on your CRM and FinTech applications. It’s also important to consider your short-term and long-term business objectives when deciding which integration path to take.

You can use a pre-built integration app to connect your FinTech system to your CRM. This app has been developed and vetted by software companies to ensure that no malicious programming code is lurking somewhere within. Therefore, you can feel confident in the security of the integration, and it should be reasonably quick to implement. The drawbacks to this approach are that customizations are limited, and subscription fees are usually required for the duration of the integration app’s usage.

Another option is to work with a developer to build a custom integration between your FinTech and CRM. Custom app development can be expensive but accommodates full customization and flexibility around your business processes and needs. Subscription fees may not be associated with this approach. Still, your system will likely require regular maintenance to ensure that the integration consistently meets the stringent guidelines outlined in the FinTech industry for managing data. 

Finally, some FinTech solutions offer a built-in or native connector to link directly to the CRM. This option provides the least amount of customization. Usually, it requires you to purchase a specific tier of your FinTech solution package to gain access to the ability to use the native connector. This solution works best with lightweight FinTech programs that don’t pass a large volume of data from your financial platform to the CRM.

Integration Steps

Integrating your FinTech with your CRM sounds good, so how do you start? 

The key is to find an integration partner who is familiar with both your FinTech system and your CRM. They will help you create a list of potential integration methods that can be utilized with your particular tech stack and can help you evaluate the pros and cons of each approach.

Here are three things you can do to prepare for the integration process.

Document the essential pieces of information you wish to sync between systems and key KPIs you’re looking to report on once the two systems are integrated. This list of requirements will help the integration partner understand the end goals for the integration and ensure that the synchronization captures the appropriate data for reporting purposes.

Determine a budget that you’re comfortable with for the integration. Understanding what funds you have available for this integration will help the partner propose potential solutions suitable for the tech stack and your budget.

Discuss a reasonable timeline and project plan for the integration with your integration partner. In addition, creating a post-integration support plan to maintain the system would be prudent.

Get Started

Revenue Ops LLC is here to help you with your integration needs. We have experienced experts on staff who can help you connect your FinTech systems with your CRM so that you can eliminate your company’s blind spots and surface those metrics you need to make the right decisions at the right time. Contact us today to set up a discovery call so that we can learn more about your business and your integration needs.

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Lead Quality

What are you doing about lead quality?

Lead quality is an essential factor in your sales and marketing initiatives. High-quality leads are most likely familiar with your products or services and therefore are likely to convert to customers.

It’s time to prepare for 2023. To ensure that your sales team is set up for success, we need to fill the pipeline with high-quality leads. What is the best way to do this?

What are you doing about lead quality?

So, you can increase your effectiveness and push more leads to close by:

  • Improving lead quality
  • Optimizing the sales and marketing funnels
  • Tracking important KPIs
  • Knowing your tools
  • Staying in touch with your prospects.

Driving quality traffic to your website starts with knowing who your customers are and what motivates them. Yet, sometimes our customers are not who we think they are. We might learn new or unusual things about our potential customers when we analyze web traffic behavior, online and offline inquiries, blog engagement, etc.

Making data-driven decisions involves applying what we learn from our data and optimizing opportunities. For example, if particular lead magnets convert prospects quickly or generate more revenue than others, we should focus on those assets. Or, if we notice a pattern of users leaving the website on a specific page or at a certain point on a form, we should look into the issue. Something may be broken on the page, or if any of the form fields require sensitive information, that might make users pause.

Revenue Ops LLC is here to help you maximize your revenue. Our team of experts can help you analyze your current tech landscape, build an ideal system to align your sales, marketing, and customer service teams, and then train them on how to use it efficiently. Contact us today to schedule a discovery call to set your team up for success in 2023!

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Improve Revenue Operations by Consolidating Your Data

How Consolidating Data Can Improve Revenue Operations

Listen to Heather Davis Lam explain how consolidating data can improve revenue operations, also known as RevOps. Authentically Successful is a podcast hosted by Carol Shultz that features experiences from founders and executives. Heather is the founder and CEO of Revenue Ops LLC, a revenue consulting company. Before becoming a revenue operations expert, she was a professional musician. Eventually, she was introduced to Salesforce and never looked back.

Heather manages a lean but nimble staff who are just as passionate about data and efficiency as she is. Their natural ability to optimize workflows internally is the key to successfully helping other companies improve their operations. Heather promotes professional development and mentorship among her staff by pairing team members together so that they can learn and grow from one another. 

Revenue Operations At Work

RevOps is a strategic approach to managing business operations. Revenue Ops LLC works with companies to leverage their people, processes, technology, and data to scale their business.

According to Heather, small and medium-sized clients who want to improve revenue operations usually start with a core technology platform, namely a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, like Salesforce Sales Cloud. As a cloud-based program, access is easily managed for users according to individual needs. In addition, users don’t have to download or install the software. 

Once the core system is implemented, other tools are inevitably added to enhance the CRM. Clients get excited about marketing automation opportunities and sales enablement utilities. Programs like Pardot and Salesloft are native complements to Salesforce.

Revenue Ops LLC always offers a training component after an implementation. Training workshops are customizable according to the client’s goals and resources. Some clients want to be as independent as possible. While other clients don’t want to touch the system once it’s set up. There are managed services packages that provide a bank of hours each month for support. It’s a straightforward ticket system that gives users access to a professional team member/dedicated representative who will troubleshoot issues or guide them in expanding the system’s capabilities.

Heather lives and breathes the idea that you can do more with less.

“We’ve been able to create efficiencies within our own business and also help others create those same efficiencies within their business. So, that you can work with more of a lean team and be able to really maximize your ROI because you’re not having to spend all this extra money on either projects that could be automated or by having new people added to your headcount to do these projects that you were doing manually before. We’re here to help out.”

Listen to the entire interview now.

 

About Revenue Ops LLC

Revenue Ops LLC is an experienced team of sales, marketing, and customer success professionals committed to helping clients improve performance. The ultimate goal is to streamline workflows so that our clients can make data-driven decisions that maximize revenue. We apply our deep knowledge of CRM systems like Salesforce and sales enablement tools like Salesloft to optimize sales potential by stimulating and tracking customer interactions.

Learn how we can help you implement a strategy to improve revenue operations and maximize your growth.

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How Does Marketing Automation Help?

How Does Marketing Automation Help?

You understand the purpose of market automation is to minimize the mundane and administrative tasks for marketers so that they can focus on fulfilling customer wants and needs. But, you also have to appreciate how the fundamental characteristics of marketing automation help businesses achieve their company-wide strategic goals. Knowing what to expect can go a long way in ensuring that marketers use the system productively and take advantage of all it has to offer.

There’s no shortage of marketing automation tools for marketers to consider. And, by and large, they all offer similar features such as personalization, lead management, analytics, etc. Pardot and HubSpot are just a few examples of marketing automation platforms.

So, the determining factor for your marketing automation software of choice may come down to personal preference or how well the provider applies the principles that their tool is designed to support. Nonetheless, let’s review how the utilities of marketing automation help companies.

Overall Efficiency

 If you invest in a marketing automation tool, it’s not unreasonable for you to expect to see an immediate improvement within your operations. When technology automatically handles menial tasks that would otherwise require a human to manage, you can expect to see quick results and virtually no errors.

One of the most common marketing functions you might want to automate is social media management. For example, you could use an automation tool to post a tweet every time your company starts a live stream. For businesses that frequently manage a large volume of social media posts across multiple platforms, a tool like this would be extremely beneficial.

There are a number of basic marketing tasks that could easily be preprogrammed. You can even automate complex workflows if you have the skills and resources. 

Broad Scalability

As your organization grows, its needs will, too. So, all of your resources will have to adapt to the increasing size of your business.

Fortunately, any capable marketing automation software will be able to scale alongside the business. So it can accommodate organizations at any point in its lifecycle and adjust as operations expand and/or teams restructure.

It’s unlikely that an organization will outgrow its market automation software. More often than not, limiting factors have to do with the other resources and services that you use. So rest assured that your software will be able to adequately handle the dynamics of your email volume, social media promotions, data capacity, etc.

Precise Reporting

Because all of the functions are automatic, the reporting about the marketing activities is very reliable. As a result, you’ll have access to insightful data that will help you understand your audience.

Suppose you ran an automated social media campaign. You can review detailed performance metrics to evaluate the type of posts that your followers found most engaging so that you can continue to deliver content that interests them.

In addition to messaging, you can also optimize your publishing schedule. For example, it would be best to publicize your content when your audience is likely to read and respond. Your marketing automation tool will be able to analyze your posts by day and hour so that you can schedule them accordingly.

And there are a variety of other marketing elements that you can assess to optimize your promotional strategies. 

How does marketing automation help?

Conversion Rate Maximization

No matter how many leads you have, this number won’t mean much unless you strive to convert them to loyal customers. It can be challenging to manage a large number of leads — even for large, resourceful companies.

You can use marketing automation software to track your leads and develop an understanding of their browsing and buying activity. The more you observe about your users’ behavior, the more effectively you’ll be able to target them.

By extension, this will allow you to maximize your conversion rate. You increase conversions by effectively communicating the details about your products, services, and offers in a timely manner.

Time Management

Your marketing team usually has other obligations to handle aside from actually implementing marketing campaigns. One of their core responsibilities is conducting research. Since automation allows them to minimize the amount of time they spend managing a campaign, they can allocate more time toward developing customer personas and assessing market trends. This work can positively affect conversion rates as well.

Ideally, marketers will also have time for their own professional development. Staying current on industry news, attending relevant training workshops, and participating in conferences and events enhances performance individually and collectively. The benefits ripple throughout the organization sooner or later.

Return On Investment

You probably don’t have a limitless marketing budget, so it’s in your best interest to get the most out of every dollar. After all, your cost efficiency plays a significant role in maximizing your return on investment.

Saving money is just as important as saving time. Keep in mind, there are two sides to revenue — income and expenses. It’s prudent to pay attention to both sides of the equation when trying to maximize revenue. As revenue specialists, we find that increasing sales and reducing costs is far more effective than focusing on one or the other.

Marketing automation helps in this effort because it’s inherently designed to apply the least amount of resources to optimize sales opportunities.  

Sales Alignment

If you think marketing automation supports only marketing functions, you’re mistaken. You can help out your sales team by automatically maintaining a steady flow of prospects. Moreover, you can warm the leads for them through a targeted stream of marketing communications that will help qualify the contacts based on interests, urgency, and other useful criteria. And if you’re an over-achiever, you can include valuable interaction data when you send the leads to your sales team so that they can personalize the conversation right from the start.

Oftentimes, sales and marketing teams are perceived as being at odds with each other. However, that doesn’t have to be the reality. When each group understands the needs and capabilities of the other, they can work together to achieve common goals.

Marketing Automation Help

If the idea of automating your marketing tasks excites you, but the thought of actually doing it intimidates you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Revenue Operations experts are here to help!

Our team of experienced and certified consultants who specialize in marketing, sales, and customer experience strategies works with companies and teams to maximize revenue. We apply our deep knowledge of operations management, technology, and data analytics to improve business performance and drive growth.

As a Salesforce Partner, we’re very familiar with Pardot, Salesforce’s marketing automation solution. But, as trusted advisors, we pride ourselves on taking a fresh approach to each of our projects. As a result, we ultimately leverage the appropriate technologies that adequately satisfy short-term and long-term business objectives.

If you need marketing automation help and are ready to take your business to the next level, schedule a free discovery meeting with one of our experts.

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What Is the Purpose of Marketing Automation?

What is the Purpose of Marketing Automation?

It seems like everyone in the business world is talking about marketing automation. If you find yourself wondering “what is is the purpose of marketing automation” when you hear people talking about it, we’re here to demystify the practice.

Technology has revolutionized the world of marketing, and one of the latest developments is quickly becoming a mainstay in the industry. If technology tends to intimidate you, don’t worry, marketing automation is not as complex as it may sound.

Consider this your definitive guide to the world of marketing automation. We’re going to cover what it is, how it could benefit your company, and what you can do to start using it.  

Marketing Automation Defined 

If you want to understand marketing automation, you need to think about the concept of automation itself. 

Automation in its purest form uses technology to complete simple tasks, and we’ve been using it for centuries now. Factories could be considered our first foray into the world of automation, and as technology has improved, automation touches nearly every modern industry. 

Marketing automation uses software and other web-based services to execute and manage marketing tasks. Essentially it can take over nearly any manual and repetitive task so you can focus on your high-value work.

A social media management tool you use to schedule posts or automatically follow people who tag your company is considered a form of marketing automation. A program that sends out email newsletters and deletes subscribers who don’t open messages is another example of automating marketing tasks.

You can leverage marketing automation tactics to handle repetitive tasks, but it can also help improve your entire sales and marketing strategy.

As marketing automation becomes more sophisticated, it can do more with predictive analytics and strategy. For example, business-to-business software like Pardot can deploy marketing landing pages to bring in more leads and sort through lead pipelines to determine the best ones to pursue. It can even generate reports that can tell you how your campaigns are performing.

The Benefits of Marketing Automation

Now that you understand how marketing automation works, we can start talking about how it can help your business. 

You may not see the point in investing in a conventional marketing cloud if things are running fine in sales and marketing. However, businesses that truly want to innovate and grow need to spend their time developing an automation strategy.

Want to know why we recommend that every business gets into automation? Once you appreciate the purpose of marketing automation and all of the good it can do, you’ll wonder why you’ve taken so long to get started.

Save time with marketing automation

Save Time

How much time do you think it takes to deploy a simple email and social media campaign about a sales promotion? It may not seem like it would take a lot of time to send out a few emails and post a status or two, but the truth is that deploying a campaign can take a lot longer than you’d think.

One of the main benefits of automation is the time it gives back to your employees. Now employees will be able to spend most of their time on more important tasks while your automation programs handle menial work.

Who will be around to make sure emails and social posts are deployed at the right time? Do you know who will decide the best customer lists to use and the proper targeting for ads?

A person would have to spend a few hours determining send times and audience segmentations. However, a marketing automation program can manage all of that in a matter of minutes.

Personalize Your Marketing Message

Personalization is an essential factor in the marketing world. If you want to resonate with today’s consumers, you can’t take a generic approach. Everyone wants to feel like businesses and companies are producing things specifically for them. And leaning into a personalized approach to marketing could do wonders for your lead pipeline and sales numbers.

It would be impossible for one person or even a team of dedicated people to manage personalizing content for hundreds or thousands of contacts. Luckily for us, the right automation software can handle it.

Marketing personalization can be as simple as adding someone’s first name to a greeting on a newsletter. However, once you collect more data, things can get much more advanced. Imagine being able to push relevant information about promotions and special offers to people with a history of buying your products and services. Think about what you could do if you could automatically send people messages that let them know they still have items in your cart. The right software can do all of this and more!

Improve Strategy

How do you currently measure success with your marketing programs? Seeing sales numbers go up might be nice, but it doesn’t give you insight into what specifically is working with your current campaigns.

If you want to improve your marketing work on a more granular level, automation is a must. You’ll be able to gain deep insight into campaign performance and get specifics into what’s performing well.

A typical Google Analytics dashboard can give you basic information about bounce rates and time spent on pages. However, it can’t provide you with information on how to run a practical A/B test to improve your next round of ads. In addition, the dashboard won’t have integrated artificial intelligence (AI) that can show you demographic information around your best customers.

The beauty of modern automation programs is that you don’t just get a lot of data and analytics. They’ll also help you process the metrics into valuable insight and help you figure out what to do next by making data-based recommendations.

It’s Time to Bring Automation to Your Business

The purpose of marketing automation is to enhance operational efficiency to ultimately maximize revenue. Marketing automation isn’t a “fad” in the industry; it’s the next stage of evolution for marketing. The combination of automation and AI can help your business improve every aspect of your approach to marketing and sales.

Getting started in automation is virtually a requirement, but it’s even more critical to ensure that you manage everything the right way. Finding the right automation partner can do a lot to set you up for success. Fortunately for you, we’re here to help your company every step of the way.

Do you have questions about how marketing automation could help your business? Are you ready to start working with a trusted automation partner? Contact us today to discuss how your company can use marketing automation the right way.

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How Talent Optimization Experts Implement a Revenue Operations Strategy

Watch episode 1 of the Rev Ops Roundtable. Our special guest is Michelle Joseph, Director of Client Acquisition & Success at Cedalion Talent and Co-founder of Thrive Collective. We discuss successes, challenges, and advice for those looking to implement a Revenue Operations strategy and Michelle’s experiences when setting this up for her own work.

Getting Started with Rev Ops

In this discussion, Michelle describes how she and her team overcame the challenges of starting a business. She says their main problem was organizing and managing prospects. They knew they wanted one centralized tool that would scale with them as the business grows.

Rather than storing customer data in a Google Sheet and relying on Slack to communicate with team members and then cobbling the tools together, they felt Salesforce would provide the functions that they wanted, and then some. But, the idea of implementing the software and trying to manage the backend, all while trying to develop the talent optimization business, was daunting. 

Like many startups, finances were limited, but Michelle recognized her limitations with technology. It’s not just a matter of installing the program; users have to be trained, the system has to be customized according to unique workflows, and the backend database must be maintained and secured properly. These tasks were beyond their skills and interests.

Revenue Operations Experts

After hearing horror stories about freelancers not setting up systems satisfactorily, Michelle was cautious about working with the right team of professionals. The opportunity costs of losing or disappointing customers were not something she was willing to pay. Nor did she have the desire to reverse engineer any problems that might crop up later on.

Working with Revenue Ops LLC was a no-brainer. The Salesforce implementation was fast and efficient. Now they’re looking ahead to segmenting their audiences and creating and automating custom flows to distribute personalized and consistent messaging to contacts regularly.

Michelle’s advice: Get it done right the first time.

Rev Ops Roundtable Episode 1
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About Revenue Ops LLC

Revenue Ops LLC is an experienced team of sales, marketing, and customer success professionals committed to helping our clients improve performance. We do this by focusing on three primary pillars:

  • People and processes
  • Technology
  • Data and analytics

Our ultimate goal is to streamline workflows so that our clients can make data-driven decisions that maximize revenue. We apply our deep knowledge of customer relationship management (CRM) systems like Salesforce and sales enablement tools like Salesloft to optimize sales potential by stimulating and tracking customer interactions.

Learn how we can help you implement a revenue operations strategy to maximize your revenue.

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How Does Revenue Operations Drive Better Value?

How Does Revenue Operations Drive Better Value?

There has been considerable talk in the business and financial worlds about how revenue operations drives better value when companies use it to create a more streamlined approach to lead management and revenue enhancement. While the concept has been around for a while, its use has only recently come into full effect thanks to platforms like Salesforce and Salesloft that make it easier for companies to implement a revenue operations strategy.

The key is understanding what revenue operations is, how to use it to maximize your revenue streams, and what value it brings to organizations. We’ll examine each of these points and more, so you can understand why revenue operations is valuable to your company.

What Is Revenue Operations?

In a traditional business, the customer service, sales, and marketing teams do their own thing with minimal connectivity. If there’s connectivity among them, it’s cursory at best, and their efforts probably aren’t coordinated.

The marketing team generates leads and nurtures them until they’re ready to speak to sales. The sales team identifies customer needs and presents ways to solve those challenges. The customer service team helps with retention and keeps the customer happy and satisfied with the provided products or services.

The Revenue Operations team (aka RevOps) brings all of these groups together cross-functionally to form a cohesive unit that works together to drive conversions and provide an excellent customer experience. The Revenue Operations team primarily focuses on three key pillars – processes, technology, and data/analytics.

Bringing Teams Together

A Revenue Operations team’s strength lies in their ability to see the entire system and how each piece – Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success – fit within it. The head of the Revenue Operations team is responsible for creating the vision of a single business view with shared goals and revenue targets. They coordinate with the heads of each department to ensure that the strategy developed for revenue operations aligns with the goals for each team and the company.

 The head of Revenue Operations then shares these strategies with members of their team, who include liaisons that regularly interact with each functional group. These liaisons are responsible for keeping the lines of communication open between the functional groups and Revenue Operations. This arrangement allows for data and ideas to be shared easily.

Platforms such as Salesforce and Salesloft make data collection across teams easy and provide a high degree of visibility into prospect and client interactions with the entire company. Each functional group is responsible for key performance indicators (KPIs), including annual recurring revenue (ARR), the number of leads generated, customer turnover rate, and customer lifetime value.

Processes Designed to Bring Everything Together

Team connection and data collection can only go so far, but processes developed to bring these two aspects together create a successful revenue operations strategy.

The goal of revenue operations is to make sure all teams work together from the beginning, when a customer considers purchasing a product thanks to marketing, closing the deal with sales, and then customer service successfully renewing and upselling products or services.

The Revenue Operations team assists each functional group by mapping processes and documenting procedures that can be shared with other functional groups or used as training materials. These processes ensure that team members follow repeatable processes and achieve consistent results.

Processes help maintain cohesion from one team to the other and ensure that everyone understands what the other groups are doing. Processes create accountability across the teams and streamline revenue growth, so you see benefits like increased upsells, better customer retention, and shorter sales cycles.

All of these add value to your teams and your company. Don’t underestimate the importance of processes in revenue operations. Collaboration and data collection can only go so far unless there are processes in place to coordinate everything into a cohesive unit.

Difficulties Implementing Revenue Operations

Revenue Operations as a concept has been growing significantly within companies of all sizes, as stockholders start to appreciate the value and importance of developing a coordinated cross-functional strategy. However, since there isn’t much information readily available about revenue operations best practices, there have been some obstacles.

One of the biggest problems is companies treating revenue operations as an experiment. They want to try it out, but they don’t invest the time and money into the resources needed to make it successful.

They may create the team but not invest in the technology stacks necessary or develop the processes required to meet KPIs. If you treat revenue operations as an experiment or as a proof of concept, then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

You need to go all-in when it comes to revenue operations. There are services available to help you develop your revenue operations strategy, like Revenue Ops LLC.

Another barrier is centralizing and organizing clean data. As we mentioned before, data collection is one of the most important aspects of RevOps. With the ever-growing number of technology platforms utilized within companies, vast quantities of data are collected on prospects and clients who are interacting with your company. However, if you don’t properly analyze the data, you can’t use it to make the data-driven decisions that move the company forward.

Finally, some companies treat revenue operations as sales operations. Many companies believe that revenue operations and sales operations are the same, but they’re not. Revenue operations offers a holistic approach to business operations to fill in the gaps between sales, marketing, and customer service. In contrast, sales operations focus primarily on the processes, technology, and analytics most important to the sales team.

Value of Revenue Operations for Companies

The primary value of having a dedicated Revenue Operations team for your organization is efficiency. Since the RevOps team has visibility into processes, procedures, and technology utilized by all cross-functional groups, they can quickly identify redundancies and streamline operations.

Other benefits include increased ROI due to targeted prospect and customer interactions. Since connected systems like Pardot, Salesforce, and Salesloft all share data and reveal different insights, the company can provide personalized messaging at the right time to prospects and customers. This experience leads to increased conversion rates and improved customer retention.

The ability to analyze data and make timely, data-driven decisions is also a fantastic benefit realized by companies that implement a Revenue Operations team. Since RevOps has fully integrated its technology systems, established standardized processes and procedures, and built reports and dashboards to analyze the entire sales and marketing funnel, detailed reporting can be created. So various teams can be agile and responsive to quickly changing market conditions.

Value Goes Beyond Revenue

While the ultimate goal is to improve revenue, a revenue operations strategy does an amazing job of creating goodwill and building morale among the sales, marketing, and customer service teams.

Start Your Revenue Operations Journey Today
Revenue Operations is becoming the norm for business-to-business companies that want to create more revenue and build a trusting and cooperative core team. Your competitors are working hard to get their revenue operations up and running, so you should too.

There may be infighting and corporate animosity among the teams because they see themselves as internal competitors. It’s hard to create a team atmosphere when there’s little communication among the core teams.

Your revenue operations strategy instills a sense of unity and camaraderie. The success of one is the success of all. The organizational culture shifts from a “me vs. them” mentality to an altruistic mindset. The entire group shares in both the corporate successes and learning opportunities.

Revenue operations provides accountability. If one team underperforms, the others are there to offer support. There’s no relishing of defeat, but instead a desire to see everyone grow and succeed for the company.

Management can see how the team dynamic changes even after the first few weeks of adopting a revenue operations strategy. The teams generally become collaborative and comfortable with sharing constructive feedback. Productivity is positively impacted when there’s a mutual appreciation for different perspectives.

The Revenue Operations team is the impartial glue that holds the various groups together and helps them realize their true potential.

Revenue Ops LLC can help you develop your revenue operations strategy from start to finish. Our team of certified experts will work with you to solve your most pressing business challenges and help you develop everything you need to bring your business to the next level.

If you’re interested in learning more or would like to talk to one of our revenue operations specialists, please contact us today.

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