I know you’ve heard it before, but in order to be a successful marketer, you must have the right marketing infrastructure in place. What is it about the infrastructure that can make you or break you as a marketer? It really boils down to your ability to understand what is going on in your sales and marketing funnel. Let me paint you a picture of two disparate infrastructures to illustrate the point.
Organization A uses salesforce.com and a marketing automation solution from the AppExchange that integrates natively with salesforce.com. Dashboards exist in both the CRM and MA tool that track funnel status in real-time. With the click of a mouse, Marketing can see exactly how the pipeline is performing, and can provide management reports to the leadership team. It’s clear which tactics are working or not, and funnel visualizations help Sales and Marketing optimize performance.
Organization B uses SugarCRM and one of only a small handful of marketing automation solutions that actually integrate with SugarCRM. The lack of dashboards and limited reporting in SugarCRM have caused the organization to create a homegrown data warehouse reporting tool. To get a complex report created or modified, Marketing must submit a ticket to IT that gets fulfilled within a week or two. In order to present the funnel, the Marketing team must create multiple reports in the CRM and MA tool, export those reports to Excel, run pivot tables to understand the data, and then copy and paste data into a master spreadsheet that tracks funnel performance. Marketing spends hours every week just trying to understand what is going on in the funnel — time that could be better spent making changes to the tactics and follow-up to improve funnel performance.
If you’re working for a company like Organization A, count yourself lucky. I’ve worked for an organization like that and can attest to the value that a strong infrastructure brought to our reporting and decision-making. Having also worked for an Organization B, I also have felt the pain. What can you do if you’re working for an Organization B?
Rule number 1 is to not throw up your hands and give up. Take stock of your situation and figure out how you can be a change agent. Work with your Sales counterparts to assess the situation and envision how you could improve performance if only you had better systems. Sales is a powerful ally in driving infrastructure change. If you are able to model the impact that an improved infrastructure can have on your organization, you have a powerful negotiating position with your management team as you seek funding and resources to make those changes. Also, don’t forget to pull in your IT team. Nothing can sink an infrastructure refresh faster than trying to skirt around IT. Make them part of your change team – you’d be surprised at the value they can add.
The best rule of all, though, is to take the time and set-up your infrastructure correctly from the beginning. If you are part of a start-up, map out how you anticipate Sales and Marketing to be functioning in 6 months, 1 year, 3 years. Then, build out your infrastructure to meet the needs of today, while enabling you to support future growth. CRMs like salesforce.com offer entry-level pricing tiers that can give you the benefit of a powerful CRM solution without all of the bells and whistles and higher price of their more robust editions.
With a little thought and the right investments, you can create a marketing infrastructure the enables your success.
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