With 40% of recent TOPO respondents stating sales and marketing alignment as the most important factor to account-based marketing (ABM) success, it’s no surprise that organizations are looking for tools that will help them make an impact. But as most companies know, aligning sales and marketing teams has a unique set of challenges—including accessing the same data and insights. That’s why RollWorks is always striving to make better sales and marketing alignment a cornerstone of our account-based platform product roadmap.
Today, let’s talk about the RollWorks ABM App on Salesforce AppExchange, which enables sales and marketing alignment via a bi-directional data sync. This Salesforce integration allows for enhanced ABM targeting, personalization, and reporting for more effective account-based plays.
This is especially relevant when it comes to account-based strategies over traditional demand-gen tactics. Shared data is the foundation that informs how you identify target accounts, engage with the right buyers within accounts, and ultimately, measure your impact on revenue and top-level business goals.
Why is marketing and sales alignment so difficult?
As we’ve talked about in the past, getting all teams on board with an account-based strategy can be a challenge for many marketers. A lot of this boils down to the difficulty of getting two teams who speak different languages on board with the same plan. But it’s actually a bit simpler than many account-based marketers have been led to believe.
Our own president Robin Bordoli is a strong advocate for marketing and sales alignment across platforms. With his history in marketing automation and AI, he’s seen the roadblocks marketing and sales teams face firsthand. He recently discussed this with MarTech Cube:
“The gap in understanding between marketing and sales is a problem of both language and meaning. Marketing teams have historically focused on leads or people. The phrase ‘marketing generated 100 leads from this event’ means 100 people. Sales teams have historically focused on accounts or companies. Salespeople don’t say ‘John Doe just bought our software’; they say, ‘GE just bought our software.'"
ABM software should bridge this gap. By connecting leads and people to accounts and companies, marketing and sales can finally speak the same language.
How the RollWorks ABM App can help
By accessing the same CRM data, including opportunity stages, sales and marketing teams can align messaging to ensure they’re speaking the same language to target accounts across channels and touchpoints. The RollWorks ABM App allows marketers and sellers to instantly connect prospect and customer data through the bi-directional flow of data across RollWorks and Salesforce. Here’s what this means for our customers:
ICP insights–Leverage sales funnel data, including that of your most successful current customers, to surface the shared attributes of your ideal customer profile to inform or validate your account-based marketing strategy. (Tip: learn more about building your ICP with our helpful template.)
Audience management–Sync account and contact data from Salesforce to RollWorks to easily define target audiences. No need to recreate target lists; simply pull in the desired fields from Salesforce.
Personalized ad creation–Dynamically populate ads with data from Salesforce, such as company name or job function, to ensure you’re gaining the attention of key contacts.
Ads based on funnel stage—Serve highly relevant ads with consistent messaging across sales and marketing synced to Salesforce stages.
Reporting in the source of truth–Report campaign performance at the account and contact level directly in Salesforce, allowing you to draw a line between marketing and sales efforts toward pipeline or revenue.
What you can do
As an account-based marketer, you’ve probably heard a lot about how important it is to create better alignment between sales and marketing. Most of the tips or tricks often suggest ways to run a better meeting or collaborate more efficiently, but fail to address the role of technology to bridge the gap. With an account-based platform that offers a bi-directional data sync, account-based teams can begin to bridge that gap.
All marketers can relate: you want to start showing ROI on account-based marketing as fast as possible, in the most efficient way possible. Relying on an account-based platform that enables right time, right message campaigns is one of the most important ways you can move the needle. Learn how you can get started building better programs with RollWorks’ ABM App, or take a look at our official announcement.
About the Author
Follow on Linkedin More Content by Caroline Van Dyke, Head of Content