Is Your Company Technology Going It Alone?

“Silo,” in information industry terminology, is not a place to hold the grain on your farm but is a data system that can’t interact or communicate with another data system. They’re separate, not connected – silos in other words.

There may be plenty of practical uses for information silos – but sharing data between sales and marketing is not one of them. When you have one system for sales, one for marketing – and never the two shall meet – you’re asking for lost opportunity. And why would you ask for such a thing? Seriously. To align sales and marketing, you’ve got to be able to share information.

So take a look at your information technology infrastructure and see what you’ve got going on. For example: 

• What software systems have been implemented?
• What can they do? What are they doing?
• How many systems do you have?
• Can they be (or are they) integrated?

Software upgrades sound like overhead to many a businessperson, and they are. But they’re also investments that can put the technological infrastructure in place to grow your business – without which opportunity is lost.

If your sales and marketing systems aren’t synched, and you have to go into them manually, you’re risking error, omissions and lost time. But when they are synched, you’re laying the groundwork for effective lead nurturing.

As lead nurturing is automated, the information is there for whoever in your company needs it – emails sent, opened, clicked through, requests, contact, proposals, service/installation records, referrals, etc. 

And here’s some of why all of this matters. According to Brian Carroll, author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, only 5‑15% of the names you collect through your website/marketing campaigns will be ready to buy from you right away.

Obviously, in contractor terms, that assumes that this is not an emergency repair call, but would be a home improvement that can allow time for the customer to research options. Regardless, to keep the large majority of people not quite ready to buy within your company’s sights, you need to nurture the lead, which calls for consistent, relevant communication – beginning with marketing but moving to sales at the appropriate time through one seamless system.