In many ways, the sales process resembles a relay race with the baton passing from various teams within marketing to sales development and then finally sales.
Marketing automation has helped enable this relay process enormously since a large number of these interactions happen digitally. Content marketing helps reach out to targeted audiences and create valid inbound leads. These leads are then nurtured and filtered into a qualified lead database by sales development and passed on to the sales team. The sales team then engages with the customer and close the deal. Sometimes, top executives participate in meetings to help sales win the deal.
With enterprises optimizing the top of the funnel with Marketing Automation tools and the bottom of the funnel with CRM software, the engagements that comprise of the large mid-funnel are managed with a manual and cumbersome process.
This becomes especially challenging when it comes to large B2B events, conferences, trade shows, etc. where they experience a large percentage of planned and unplanned meetings.
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Meeting Automation Platform
MAP is a category of software that automates workflows associated with pre-meeting planning, in-meeting management, and post-meeting analysis and follow-up. A comprehensive MAP increases the number and quality of strategic meetings and is especially effective for enterprises that need to manage high volumes of strategic meetings at events, briefing centers, roadshows, sales meetings, and training forums.
A good MAP can help bridge the gap between all of the processes that take place online and offline, and the follow-up process. A modern best-in-class MAP solution such as Jifflenow integrates with sales and marketing software, such as CRM, marketing automation, badge scanners, event registration, and event mobile applications. As a result, data from B2B meetings can effectively be fed back into the sales funnel, creating an unbroken chain from marketing to lead generation to sales.
Here are some definite advantages associated with automating strategic meetings:
– Deeper insights
Any member of the sales or marketing team can get a holistic picture of each customer prospect since they have access to information regarding meetings, in addition to the digital communication footprint. This can help decide on further engagement in order to take an opportunity to a logical conclusion.
– Shortened Sales Cycles
By creating a comprehensive reporting process, there is a better record of objectives, pre-meeting communication as well as follow-up information. This is especially crucial during events and conferences when a large number of meetings typically happen within a span of three or four days. This can help expedite the sales cycle.
– Alignment and Visibility
Given the significance of B2B meetings to the sales process, maintaining extensive records of meetings is important in the long run since it can help create useful insights when it comes to designing the marketing and sales processes. It also brings better alignment with company objectives.
In conclusion, every customer meeting is an opportunity to bring in more business and drive sales. But moving customers along the sales cycle is only possible by increasing the number of touchpoints and making them more context-driven and effective. Automation is the next logical step to smoothening out the transition between marketing and sales while bridging the gap between the top and bottom of the funnel.
If you’d like to know more about automating meetings and how to empower your sales and marketing teams at events, click here.
