The days of marketing handing off leads to sales and retreating to their creative, lead gen marketing silo are over. Now more than ever, marketing needs to work with sales to maintain an accurate customer relationship management (CRM) system that will serve both departments as they nurture prospective customers through the buying cycle.
Buying cycle, you say? Yes, the buying cycle. Today marketing has been forced to change because of the power of the buyer accessing what they want when they want it online. Now marketing must provide content and information online where their prospective buyers go. In order to do this, they need to thoroughly understand the prospective customer profile and behaviors through the buying cycle (not the sales cycle) and co-own the quality of the CRM system.
A Harvard Business Review article titled Rethinking Marketing cited statistics about ownership of the CRM system. According to a Harte-Hanks survey of 300 North American companies, 42% reported that IT owned the CRM system, 31% sales and only 9% marketing. According to the article:
“Information is tightly held, often because of a lack of trust, competition for promotions or resources, and the silo mentality.“
Marketing must be hands-on when it comes to CRM systems and support sales to make sure that communications through the buying cycle are in alignment with what prospects want and need. A critical factor in marketing success is having accurate, current data with which to make decisions.
Does your CRM system need work? Contact New Incite today – we provide consulting and assessment services for marketing systems, including CRM.
