A generation ago, if you wanted to learn about a car you were interested in purchasing you would need to walk onto a lot and talk to a car salesperson to learn more. If the car salesperson was good, they would attempt to understand your needs and wants and suggest a car. If they were bad, they would push a car on you they assumed you might want. Now, more than 85% of all car shoppers conduct research online before stepping on a lot to be better prepared before buying.
While consumers purchasing a car may seem disconnected from B2B sales, the evolution of purchasing behavior is consistent. Buyers in both the consumer and business realm want to conduct research on their own terms before talking to a sales rep.
However, there are caveats to this new purchasing behavior. Harvard Business Review found that customers were 86% less likely to have buyer’s remorse if guided proactively through the sales process, instead of sending questions to a sales rep who responds reactively throughout the process.
The question then arises: How can a business thrive in this new sales environment? More importantly, does your business have a disconnected tech stack that would inhibit this new type of purchasing behavior, or do you have a connected Revenue Operations platform? The key lies in your revenue operations setup, and how you handle prospect and customer messaging from new prospect through a renewing customer.
Routing a Lead With an Optimized RevOps Platform
You Had Me at Hello
Research shows it take 2.6 seconds for a user’s eyes to land on the most important part of a website. If your website visitor doesn’t find what they need, they likely will give up and move on which could represent a lost sale.
Like any face-to-face conversation, knowing who you are talking with critically alters who and how you communicate in any given conversation. If an IT manager visits your website, you would communicate differently with them than a visiting CEO.
With LeanData Matching API, a Revenue Operations professional can ensure that every conversation starts off on the right foot. Use cases of the Matching API include :
- Extend LeanData Matching outside of Salesforce to any external system
- Make external systems aware—both LeanData and Salesforce
- Reinforce and expand lead and contact matching context
So in the case of visiting sales operations professional to your website, you can use LeanData’s Matching API to display relevant content to that individual as an example.
Guiding the Journey
After surfacing relevant content to the right users, the hope is that a number of them might take a next step. Following up on the above example, if you have a prospect from IT who requests a free trial you want the personalized experience to continue beyond the Matching API.
With LeanData’s FlowBuilder Integrations, a Revenue Operations professional can ensure that each prospect gets the information they need. FlowBuilder Integrations connect your most used tools directly into your lead and contact routing graphs. Launching with Salesloft and Outreach, the correct email cadence or sequence can be launched automatically every time. Other use cases for LeanData Integrations are:
- Automate previously manual actions to boost sales and support team activity
- Align sales and marketing strategies with rules of engagement for a targeted approach
- Accelerate speed-to-lead, engagement and response
So when you’re visiting IT manager prospect requests a demo, they can receive, in an email response, content personalized to them. If an existing customer downloads a whitepaper, or if a former customer requests pricing, with the Salesloft and Outreach integrations, the Revenue Operations professional can ensure that instead of a generic response these individuals receive email responses specific to their roles, needs, and organizations.
Critical Events
Every organization has interesting moments that can mark a spike in a buyer’s interest. Within Salesforce those activities can exist within a custom object. “Free trial” would undoubtedly be an interesting moment for example, with “trial” being the custom object created inside your Salesforce.
Continuing the buyer journey with our prospect from IT, let’s say inside your organization’s Salesforce, the custom object “trial” needs to be sent to the correct sales executive. With the Routing API, any custom or standard object inside Salesforce can now enter a round robin set up inside your organization’s lead or contact routing graph. This would enable the custom object “trial” to enter your round robin and be assigned to an appropriate account executive.
Additional use cases of the Routing API include:
- Accelerate speed of response for any Salesforce object
- Support cross functional teams who oversee the same objects
- Expand LeanData functionality to your entire Salesforce suite
Final Word of the Connected Revenue Operations Platform
Marketing and sales teams work hard to close deals, but the efforts are often disconnected. Now with LeanData’s FlowBuilder Integration and API launch, those efforts can become connected in a powerful way. By linking different teams together such as demand generation, sales development reps, and operations together within a single Revenue Operations hub, everyone wins!