Distributors need to tear down the walls between Marketing & Sales

In most distribution businesses today sales and marketing are two distinct departments, with two distinct functions, staffed by people with different skill sets. Mininal communication or collaboration happens between them. The only time these two departments seem to speak to each other is when sales thinks they are not getting enough leads and marketing thinks that sales isn’t closing enough business. Simply put, instead of a collaborative relationship with each department complimenting and working with the other towards a common company goal of increasing sales they become adversarial.

When management brings them both into a room to find out why more business isn’t closing, marketing point to the number of leads they generated and sales responds that the quality of the leads are poor. In today’s hyper competitive environment this is simply unacceptable and it’s time distribution companies tear down these walls. Sales and marketing need to work proactively with each other to determine what marketing campaigns are generating quality leads as well as defining what products and services to market.

This is where a tool like Microsoft Dynamics CRM and CRM for Distribution coupled with a Microsoft certified add-on tool like Click Dimensions can help. Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers a fully integrated set of tools to manage the entire sales process from quote generation to lead capture to opportunity close, thus allowing companies to analyze and report on opportunities at any point in the sales process. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and CRM for Distribution also allow companies to monitor social media with built in functionality like social listening. You can now monitor what your customers are saying and thinking about your company across a spectrum of platforms such a Facebook and twitter. Couple this with a powerful marketing solution like Click Dimensions and you have an end to end marketing automation tool fully integrated with your CRM solution.

Click Dimensions provides the ability to create, execute and track marketing campaigns rapidly and in real time to maximize the value of your leads and opportunities. Click Dimensions can also create nurture campaigns to keep your message in front of customers and prospects. Additionally, Click Dimensions enables you to automate lead capture from multiple sources, including websites and email as well as analyze the effectiveness of these campaigns with information on conversion rates and campaign ROI from closed sales.

So if you want to get the most out of your Sales and Marketing departments implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Click Dimensions will provide your company with the tools they need to succeed.