The Marketing Executives Group International

Author: Harvey Kraft
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=92357&locale=en_US&trk=tab_pro

Web collaboration is about to change how marketing and sales channels work together. The compelling premise for commercial Web collaboration is that interactivity opens up a host of opportunities that give your business a competitive edge, generate sustainable revenue increases, lower cost of acquisition, and achieve remarkably efficient productivity.

Interactive Web collaboration tools are about to change how marketing and sales channels work together. Before I explain what these tools are and what they can do for you, we should focus on these two words: “customer” and “partnership.”

The seesaw question in the marketing-sales relationship is: Who owns the customer? Naturally, whoever owns the customer owns the source of revenue. Clearly, all stakeholders know this, so how about sharing. Why not define customer ownership as a partnership.

Customer Partnerships

Customer partnerships give both brand marketers and sales partners the motivation to work hand-in-hand. It just makes sense for marketing and sales to team up on generating demand, prospecting and bringing leads into the fold. But partner initiatives can also be applied in the making the sale, and in working together on long-term retention and loyalty activities. When brand marketing and sales partners buy into shared customer ownership, a host of opportunities arise to align the workflows and rewards for the organization and channel.

Operational silos and blame-focused behaviors won’t go away unless there’s a clear financial reward for partners and an integrated workflow pipeline is put into place to guide success. Using Web collaboration technology, brands and channels can be unified by a common focus on delivering great customer engagement. A collaborative focus on optimum customer experiences — from the first touch point forward — should be the number one goal of your enterprise-channel partnership, because it will generate sustainable revenue increases, lower cost of acquisition, and achieve remarkably efficient productivity.

The compelling premise for commercial Web collaboration is that interactive communications give your business a competitive edge. Whether you are operating in a traditional, mature business or a challenger brand, this game-changing strategy will extend your marketing real estate and energize your sales relationships with customers.

Three innovative opportunities are now available for aligning marketing-sales Web collaborations with customer engagement: (a) on-demand marketing communications PRM, (b) LIVE customer-access portal to sales, support and information, and (c) value-added customer engagement community.

MarComm On-Demand

A MarComm PRM portal gives your sales partners on-demand access to your printed collateral, sales promotion, and direct mail campaigns. Instantly eliminate the headaches you now have trying to get these items into the sell-through stream. Here’s how it could be: Your catalog of marketing materials are available online for your sales partners to order. How simple is that? But the fun part really begins when you empower your sales partners with collaboration options. They can decide what to promote; to add their logo and contact info; to convert printed materials into electronic media; to customize a direct mail package; and even pay for their share of the cost.

With this type of collaboration your marketing is suddenly transformed into a great partner in the eyes of sales and your productivity skyrockets. That’s potentially a major competitive advantage. The more you cultivate the perception that your company is a superior partner compared to your competitors, the greater your market share will grow with your sales partners.

Leads Go LIVE

If you’re generating and delivering leads to your sales partners, lead quality and speed to action are keys to conversion. But if you totally depend on your sales partners to develop and sell leads, do consider how much more leverage your brand would have with them if you contributed qualified, instant leads to their kitty. Partnering on lead gen is another opportunity to become a preferred brand partner in their eyes, especially in a tough economy.

But new connectivity tools could take the serving of leads to new heights. Imagine. What if you could connect a ready and willing prospect lead with a sales partner in real-time for an immediate engagement? LIVE online communications is the next big thing in commercial uses of the Web. Imagine owning a Web portal where consumers are instantly connected with sales and/or support personnel via secure and stable live feeds It’s no longer just a possibility. It’s the newest now in digital commerce applications.

Now advisory and consultative representatives could guide incoming leads through marketing information and the buying of your products or services — right through a transaction. Companies can choose to sell direct to the public, or they could invite their sales channel to populate your company’s integrated LIVE engagement portal. If you are committed to customer partnership, you could be giving your partners the opportunity to deliver person-to-person interactions with customers on the Web. The customer lifetime value increases as sales partners reconnect again and again and build a relationship, strengthening your brand’s retention objectives.

Value-added Community

Enthusiastic, satisfied customers not only stay with you longer, and buy more over time, but they are also your most successful source for new customers. An excellent way to cultivate their post-sale enthusiasm is by offering customers an online members-only community that delivers lots of value-added benefits, lifestyle information, timely offers and discounts. Access to community engagements and value-added incentives will encourage customers to stay with your brand. But this portal also provides another Web collaboration opportunity by including your sales channel partners.

When customers check in online to redeem the offers and content, they should see the contact info of the sales partner who sold them in the first place. Furthermore, with personalized e-broadcasts you could extend your co-branded partnership into the communications you are having with the community of customers. Because your sales partners are included in this retention portal, they will espouse your brand for the extra value customers can expect.

Collaboration Architectures

Customer engagements bring together your enterprise and sales force in ways that serve to enhance the lifetime revenue value of these relationships. Collaborative digital architectures are designed to ignite sustainable growth, increase workflow productivity, and eliminate or reduce the waste of time, money and resources.