Digitization and intelligent automation are currently changing the processes in marketing and sales. There are presently three technology trends: integrated distribution platforms that help achieve technological flexibility, the consistent automation of operations beyond the boundaries of marketing and sales, and sales robots, which can control the automated processes through data analysis optimally. Integrated into a sales platform, intelligent software robots can provide sales employees with predictive analysis of the probability of closing a deal, for example.
This makes them even more successful than before. At the same time, digitization and automation are making personal interaction with existing or potential customers more the focus of work because the integrated sales platform relieves you of routine tasks and enables the sales staff to concentrate fully on the needs of their customers. Last but not least: Process automation across departmental boundaries not only has a technological dimension, but it is also a question of willingness to change and corporate culture.
Integrated Sales Platforms And Flexible Microservices
That means processes beyond the boundaries of marketing and sales. Therefore, the big trend in the technical infrastructure in marketing and sales is flexible, company-specific integration and automation platforms. The future belongs to approaches such as iPaaS ( Integration Platform as a Service ) and the need-based combination of microservices. Because the number of innovative microservices for marketing and sales has almost exploded over the past few years.
Today there are already thousands upon thousands of them. Conventional monolithic sales solutions cannot keep up with this pace of innovation, nor do they offer the same flexibility and future security as a dedicated, needs-based sales platform. Such a platform can also hybrid integration of on-premises hosted systems with cloud-based systems (hybrid integration).
Automation Focuses On People And Their Needs
It may sound a little paradoxical, but digitization is precisely what is putting people back at the center of marketing and sales. Thanks to technological support, the human factor is even more relevant than ever. For sales staff, it will be crucial for success to put themselves in their customers’ shoes and to advise them individually and in a way that is tailored to their needs because process automation has already taken care of many conventional routine sales tasks when the personal contact between the salesperson and his customer is established.
At the same time, the sales staff will be far better informed than before about the fundamental interests of the lead or existing customer. Marketing and sales processes can already be optimized using data analysis support very effectively. Personal contact remains crucial, especially with complex products. This applies in the B2C context, for example, to private insurance and the B2B context when deciding on a new capital good.
The knowledge that a company gains through its integrated sales platform and makes it available to its sales staff at the right moment means that personal consultation and sales talks are much more well-founded and customer-specific than before. The sales staff are thus developing more and more into crucial account managers with consulting skills. This means more customer focus, higher customer loyalty, and more sales for companies.
Digitization Is Changing Organizations
In times of digitization and data analytics, organizations need to break away from the old way of thinking in departments. Because successfully automated processes are consistent. For example, leads collected by marketing on landing pages are qualified using automatically controlled nurturing routes. Those leads that reach sales maturity automatically appear as a task in the sales system, for example, in the sales team’s CRM. Ideally, these sales-ready leads are also prioritized based on the automatically determined probabilities of closing.
Thanks to the integrated sales platform, the departments are just as intertwined as their systems. How smoothly marketing and sales grow together. gfg and how quickly digitization ultimately succeeds do not depend solely on the technological infrastructure. The corporate culture and the willingness to change in the organization also play an essential role. Therefore, successful automation in marketing and sales is a question of technology and change management.
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