Here is a real live scenario of 'sales enablement' that I heard from our Sitecore North American VP of Client and partner engagement, Jason Crea. Makes a marketer smile.
Our sales professionals at Sitecore are very skillful at listening. One of the hot requests they have picked up on from their prospects - the marketers, execs and IT pros they work with is this- "show me ways I can learn more about my visitors so I can service them better. Take my anonymous visitors and give them a persona, and even better, if they fill out a form and provide me their info, breathe that information and their interests into my CRM. And use that CRM info to control their web experience."
So the sales team figured it out and responded- "No problem- we'll show you in real time, with your own data!"
It turns out Sitecore's public website uses the Sitecore Online Marketing Suite to help us understand visitor preferences. Working with Sitecore's Web Forms for Marketers, form data is imported into the CRM. In fact, the visitor's entire experience info is collected, associated and imported real time.
Our sales team demos this by using GoToMeeting to show the prospects several things. First, the prospects visits the site , views and downloads a few thing, and then fill out a form. The sales team then logs into the CRM, turns on GoToMeeting, and shows the prospect how they 'ding!' just showed up in their CRM view, along with their website history, as soon as they filled in the form. In fact other prior visits may also show up if the same cookie was still active. That is empowerment!
Then, often there is a technical developer on the conference, who may have signed up on our developer website, called SDN (Sitecore Developer Network). This site has a whole treasure chest of technical insite and materials, and anyone can sign up and get partial access- but not all the jewels. But, on that same GoToMeeting the sales team shows how, by looking up the developer in the CRM from their initial registration, they can click on a few check boxes and gives them full access to all resources. Literally the developer refreshes their screen and a whole new experience opens up with new resources and assets- all controlled by the salesperson from the company CRM.
Real time alerts in response to website visits are another aspect that lights up the sales team. They get an inbound email message, no matter where they are, and clicking a few links they see what content their prospect was looking at. Often the sales team will then reach out directly with related and supplemental info. Prospects are happy to get the 'just in time and on target' info, and they are absolutely amazed at the visibility the team has- and what a compelling demo this makes.
I wish I could say Marketing thought of these demo scenarios, but we didn't. Our web marketing team did have a bit to do with putting the integrations in place, which is relatively easy with Sitecore technology, but Sales gets the kudos and credit for connecting the dots on how to share and extend a vision for their prospect customers.
Our sales professionals at Sitecore are very skillful at listening. One of the hot requests they have picked up on from their prospects - the marketers, execs and IT pros they work with is this- "show me ways I can learn more about my visitors so I can service them better. Take my anonymous visitors and give them a persona, and even better, if they fill out a form and provide me their info, breathe that information and their interests into my CRM. And use that CRM info to control their web experience."
So the sales team figured it out and responded- "No problem- we'll show you in real time, with your own data!"
It turns out Sitecore's public website uses the Sitecore Online Marketing Suite to help us understand visitor preferences. Working with Sitecore's Web Forms for Marketers, form data is imported into the CRM. In fact, the visitor's entire experience info is collected, associated and imported real time.
Our sales team demos this by using GoToMeeting to show the prospects several things. First, the prospects visits the site , views and downloads a few thing, and then fill out a form. The sales team then logs into the CRM, turns on GoToMeeting, and shows the prospect how they 'ding!' just showed up in their CRM view, along with their website history, as soon as they filled in the form. In fact other prior visits may also show up if the same cookie was still active. That is empowerment!
Then, often there is a technical developer on the conference, who may have signed up on our developer website, called SDN (Sitecore Developer Network). This site has a whole treasure chest of technical insite and materials, and anyone can sign up and get partial access- but not all the jewels. But, on that same GoToMeeting the sales team shows how, by looking up the developer in the CRM from their initial registration, they can click on a few check boxes and gives them full access to all resources. Literally the developer refreshes their screen and a whole new experience opens up with new resources and assets- all controlled by the salesperson from the company CRM.
Real time alerts in response to website visits are another aspect that lights up the sales team. They get an inbound email message, no matter where they are, and clicking a few links they see what content their prospect was looking at. Often the sales team will then reach out directly with related and supplemental info. Prospects are happy to get the 'just in time and on target' info, and they are absolutely amazed at the visibility the team has- and what a compelling demo this makes.
I wish I could say Marketing thought of these demo scenarios, but we didn't. Our web marketing team did have a bit to do with putting the integrations in place, which is relatively easy with Sitecore technology, but Sales gets the kudos and credit for connecting the dots on how to share and extend a vision for their prospect customers.
And Sales also just showed how to put more sales into 'sales enablement'- from your website!
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