Does your organization struggle with outdated systems, siloed departments, and inefficient processes that prevent you from leveraging your marketing and sales efforts? You are not alone, and the problem is fixable.
Does this sound familiar?
- Your marketing and sales teams operate in separate silos with little collaboration.
- Your CRM system has data quality issues, isn't integrated with other business systems and reporting capabilities are limited.
- Your marketing automation platform feels outdated and clunky.
- You're losing leads due to poor system integration and inefficient handoff processes.
- Marketing is primarily reactive, supporting sales requests rather than driving strategic initiatives.
- You struggle to demonstrate marketing's impact on revenue.
And speaking of demonstrating impact, where is that fancy, automatic data dashboard that was demonstrated before you signed up for your CRM-system?
If you're nodding your head, you're not alone. These challenges are common across organizations of all sizes, particularly following mergers or acquisitions when disparate systems need to be unified.
Is Your MarTech Stack Failing You?
How do you know if your CRM and MA setup needs an overhaul or at least a thorough quality check followed by optimization? Look for these warning signs:
- System fragmentation: You've added numerous tools and systems to compensate for shortcomings in your core platforms.
- Data Quality issues: Your teams don't trust the data in your systems, making it difficult to make informed decisions.
- Integration issues: Information isn't flowing properly between systems, leading to data loss and missed opportunities.
- Reactive marketing: Your marketing team is primarily responding to requests from other departments rather than executing strategic campaigns to generate and nurture leads.
- Lead management gaps: Sales representatives bypass the lead object entirely, creating opportunities directly from accounts or contacts just to "stake their claim."
- Inability to measure impact: You can't clearly demonstrate how marketing activities contribute to revenue.
- Manual workarounds: Team members have created numerous manual processes to compensate for system limitations.
The Root Causes: Beyond Technology
When organizations face these challenges, the issues typically go deeper than just outdated technology. The problems generally fall into three key areas:
1. Strategic Foundation
- No cohesive strategy or strategic planning
- Marketing acting as a reactive support function for sales
- Outbound sales-driven approach with a lack of strategy for inbound leads or lacking a lead management process for leads in general
- Unclear target groups and ideal customer profiles
2. People and Process
- Siloed operations in Sales and Marketing and within marketing teams
- Inconsistent practices and no standardized processes for lead management
- Key roles and competencies missing within marketing to support the inbound process
3. Technology and Data
- Weak integration between CRM and Marketing Automation causing data loss
- Underutilized marketing automation system
- Incorrect setup of Web/MA/CRM integration to support the inbound process
- Heavy customizations and reactive system development not strategically aligned
- Poor data quality leading to low transparency
- Probably lacking a CDP
We often hear that it is impossible to prove marketing's impact on revenue throughout the customer journey. But that is just not true.
Creating a Revenue Engine
The solution to these challenges isn't simply implementing new technology. It requires a comprehensive approach that addresses strategic alignment, processes, people, and technology together.
A successful transformation involves:
Strategic Alignment
- Aligning marketing and sales around shared strategic initiatives and priorities
- Treating inbound leads as a core strategic asset
- Ensuring website content, messaging, and channels are strategically aligned with the customer journey
Organization and Process
- Clearly defining roles and responsibilities to support ideal processes
- Creating a marketing organization with centers of excellence
- Establishing a unified lead management process with standardized definitions
- Implementing structured ways of working with requests and prioritization
Technology and Data
- Analyzing if the tech setup drives business impact – can we optimize and integrate current solutions or do we need something else.
- Prioritizing integration from web to marketing automation to CRM, ERP and so on.
- Migrating to MA & CRM systems with setups that support the ideal processes or reconfigure existing setups.
- Establishing data management practices and structured system development
- Assessing integration platform needs
At Exelement, we focus on analyzing needs rather than selling a specific system.
The Results: Transformation in Action
Organizations that take this structured approach addressing these foundational issues typically achieve:
- Unified marketing and sales teams with shared KPI’s, goals and priorities
- Efficient lead generation with traceable ROI
- A streamlined ecosystem providing a comprehensive view of the entire environment
- The ability to easily identify problems and pinpoint improvement areas
- Marketing that functions strategically rather than reactively
- Improved data quality enabling accurate reporting and forecasting
After such transformations, sales teams frequently report that "getting nurtured and warm leads from marketing has freed up significant time for our sales team."
Is It Time to Reassess Your Tech Stack?
If you're experiencing any of the challenges outlined above, it may be time to take a step back and evaluate your entire marketing and sales ecosystem. Consider these questions:
- Does your current tech stack support your ideal processes, or are you adapting your processes to fit technology limitations?
- Can you clearly trace the customer journey from a web visit through to a closed deal?
- Can you get a proper overview of ongoing Account Based Marketing initiatives in addition to paid and organic lead generation?
- Do your marketing and sales teams share common definitions, goals, and metrics?
- Is your data consistent, clean, and trusted across the organization?
- Can you demonstrate marketing's contribution to revenue?
If you answered "no" to any of these questions, it might be time to consider a holistic transformation of your marketing and sales approach—one that addresses strategy, people, processes, and technology together.
The journey may seem daunting, but with the right approach and expert guidance, you can transform your marketing and sales operations from a source of frustration to a competitive advantage that drives sustainable growth for your business.
A great first step is to contact us for an open discussion.
