We need to bring media and marketing sales into the 21st century

Chris Whife, president international, Demand Science looks at the importance of data for the evolving role of sales and marketing

The world of work has completely changed over the last year, with many commentators stating that businesses went through three years of digital transformation in only a couple of months. This shift is especially noticeable within sales and marketing teams. 

Traditionally, these teams have relied on being creative relationship builders and out of the box thinkers, with in-person meetings often an important part of their roles. But the world has changed. Not least because of digital transformation, but also with the ongoing limitations we’re living through with the Covid pandemic.

It has now become an essential part of their roles to leverage the digital tools and information available, in order to capitalise on opportunities in the market – wherever they are. 

There’s also the prospect of the post-Covid bounce back, which no business can afford to miss. Both teams are core functions in helping grow a business by finding new prospects and opportunities and building relationships with them.

As economies have reopened, now is the time where companies should be making the most of every opportunity they have available to them. If they are not using the most up to date methods and utilising data to get all the insights they can, they’re likely to fall behind the competition and, crucially, seriously impact the bottom line and long-term growth of a company. 

The rise of data

Despite the increasing use of digital tools in companies over recent years, some elements of sales and marketing still relied heavily on in-person contact.

For example, the events industry; pre-pandemic it was still often the case that many sales executives would travel to big conferences and events to make connections with potential buyers.

Sometimes armed with incomplete knowledge of who to be on the lookout for at certain companies, but also casting a net out in the hopes of finding the right people, at a large conference with thousands of attendees this was often a waste of resources.

In recent months, even the few live or hybrid events have found challenges with vendor booths being so far from the speaking sessions-  due to efforts to spread things out more, that it was a waste of money exhibiting.

Along with this, sales executives could arrange a full-day of meetings, yet without being able to identify who is actually looking to buy a product beforehand this could result in them not generating any leads at all.

However, over the past 18 months, sales and marketing teams were forced, along with everyone else, to adapt to working at home, without the benefit of in-person meetings and events.

Sales and marketing teams needed to find new ways of identifying and contacting potential leads. This forced many workers to truly consider data as a viable tool.

However, for it to be useful data needs to be high quality. This means information that includes who to contact at a company, their mobile number and their social profile so they can be contacted whilst not in the office, and, crucially, insight into whether they intend to purchase a product. By ensuring that teams have this high-quality data will make the difference when it comes to the success of generating leads.

Making data easy to use for everyone

While the right data is vital in establishing modern sales and marketing functions, it is equally important to have access to straightforward tools that can be used with that data.

For example, within the UK there could be hundreds or thousands of potential leads for a business to sell their products too, with only a handful looking to buy at that moment. This is impossible for a human to go through and process manually in a short enough amount of time to make it worthwhile. 

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By implementing technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) it is possible to get under the surface of the data and gain valuable knowledge.

For example, AI and ML can provide insight into what a person has been looking at, or where they have entered your site from, whether that’s a piece of targeted advertising or a thought leadership article by a spokesperson.

This can then highlight the people who are showing signs of wanting to buy a product from the company, allowing sales executives to prioritise outreach to those targets. This results in a higher chance of converting the lead. It can also ensure that conversations are not forgotten, automatically reaching out to targets if they have not heard back within a set amount of time. These tools make data simple to use and understand, allowing teams to generate real value out of the information available to them. 

What does the future look like?

While the exact picture for the future of work is not clear, data and the insights we can glean from them will certainly be central to any successful business moving forward.

Teams that are still resisting this change are going to start losing out to the ones that are embracing it. By combining high quality data with the latest AI and ML techniques, sales and marketing teams can be confident in the knowledge they are pursuing the right leads, whether that’s in a physical office or remotely.

Chris Whife is president international at Demand Science