Long before marketing automation was a reality there was a great movie called Glengarry Glen Ross. Set in New York, the movie follows a cut-throat sales competition in a real-estate office.

Every sales lead was pursued ruthlessly and cheating your colleagues was encouraged. The winner received a brand new Cadillac and the loser got the sack. Such is the nature of sales.

For the movie buffs among you will remember the cynical sales mantra, ABC;

Always Be Closing

It summed up perfectly the malevolent, stop-at-nothing approach to converting a lead to a prospect, where the salesmen were willing to lie to their prospect to close the deal and steal just to acquire the leads in the first place. Thankfully the world has moved on and savvy businesses will rarely be influenced by underhand marketing and clumsy sales techniques.

So is ABC relevant to business owners today?

The answer is yes; by implementing marketing automation.

Marketing Automation means you will Always Be Closing.

Most of us have experienced marketing automation when exchanging an email address for an ebook or a report, and getting an email straight to our inbox, but in reality Marketing Automation is far more powerful than that simple transaction.

Your website, social media and marketing technology is far more effective at understanding and responding to the needs of your prospects than traditional sales teams can ever be. You can identify, profile, engage, connect, educate, nurture and convert your target prospect long before either party are ready to have the first sales contact.

And when the first sales contact takes place, your sales team will be armed with your prospects’ main issues, a list of the content they have consumed, pages on your site they have visited and all other important information.

You will have built up a comprehensive lead conversion score that predicts the likelihood of conversion based on their behaviour and the behaviour of previous clients.

This is a huge benefit to your sales team, it means they will only be focusing on the hottest leads, in full knowledge that the leads still in the system are being developed for them.

Behavioural triggers

Trigger based on prospect behaviour will ensure that the relevant sales person is notified when a lead becomes hot, a personalised email will be triggered to the prospect containing the information they need, and the prospect can book a slot directly into the sales person’s diary without an email or call ever being exchanged.

Once the initial sales call has taken place, all subsequent contact and triggers can be automated to ensure your prospect is supported as well as possible, without your organisation ever needing to expend a second’s more sales resource than required.

From a small business perspective this truly is the wondrous age of Sales and Marketing.

Once marketing automation is in place, no matter where you or your team are, you’ll Always Be Closing.

Interested?

To book a no obligation chat about automation and how it can supercharge your marketing and sales process, click here and drop us a note.

Or for a copy of our latest book, Content Marketing Automation- The 5 Biggest Fails and how to avoid them, click on the image below.

Thank for reading,

Adam