How We Help Marketing Leaders Succeed: One Counseling Session at a Time

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How We Help Marketing Leaders Succeed: One Counseling Session at a Time-by Amy Arndt

It?s a really exciting time to be a Customer Success Manager at InsideView. Through innovation, stellar talent and a lot of hard work, InsideView has grown from a sales enablement solution to a complete CRM Intelligence platform that helps sales, marketing and account management teams succeed.

As a result, our CSMs are having more and more conversations with marketing leaders, and spend a lot of time learning about the specific nuances that make their situations unique. Current business jargon would probably refer to InsideView CSMs as ?Valued Business Consultants,? or ?Trusted Advisors,? but I?m not really one for business jargon. When I?m listening to a customer tell me about their challenges, I like to think I?m more of a counselor. You tell me your problems; I do my best to help provide the tools you need to solve those problems.

When the InsideView CSMs engage in these ?counseling? sessions with marketers, the conversations run the gamut, but the problems are always similar in tone. Marketing departments are expected to serve up high volume and high quality, and there?s always a sense of urgency to get it done quickly. Also, as counseling sessions go, sometimes it takes a while to build trust. I completely understand that.  It?s pretty rare that I speak with a CMO on a first meeting, and they readily admit that things aren?t going all that well. If I talked to a marketing leader on a first call and they said this, I would fall right out of my chair:

?Things are grim, Amy. Only one of the sales reps has hit their number this month, and the rest of the sales team is complaining that the leads that are coming in are terrible. I have an ulcer the size of Dallas and I haven?t slept in a month.?

Yet, it?s more common than not that marketing leaders end up telling me that the pressure they?re getting from Sales is significant. It?s no secret sales and marketing departments don?t exactly get along like peas and carrots. Sales teams groan about not having enough leads. Marketing responds by turning up the volume, and Sales comes back and complains about the quality of the leads. If Sales doesn?t hit their goal, the marketing departments are the first to face the blame. Meanwhile, marketers are pulling out their hair, trying to find the right balance to keep everybody happy.

Just this week, I spoke with a guy who has been at his company for less than two weeks. He was hired to come in and completely re-vamp the company?s marketing plan because guess what? The company didn?t think the current marketing plan was working. Now, this particular customer is not yet using InsideView for Marketing, but lucky for them, the sales team has InsideView for Sales. The individual sales people are doing a lot of their own prospecting, and they use InsideView for pre-call planning. They also use our Watch Lists to monitor their key named accounts, and rely on our Connections to speed up the sales process by getting to the right people faster. But despite the fact that the sales team is doing some of their own outbound prospecting, they are looking to the marketing department to deliver more leads, and in a jiffy.

This customer is new to InsideView, and today I had an opportunity to hear a bit about the challenges he faces. He has a lot on his plate. He has big plans to redesign their website, implement a marketing automation solution, and clean up his CRM. The good news is that InsideView will be there to guide him every step of the way ? from helping him reduce the number of fields on his web forms, to enriching his content with InsideView insights, to using CRM intelligence to help with territory planning. We?ve got it all covered. The customer is relieved, and we have a plan in place to let InsideView step in where we can make the process easier. That?s what I consider to be a good, productive session.

In case you are one of those marketing leaders who feels like you have more in front of you than you can handle, please pick up the phone and call us. There is so much we can do to help you! It doesn?t have to be so hard. So grab a cup of coffee and call your CSM. I?m certain that after speaking with us, you?ll walk away feeling better about things. You?ll have clarity on how we can help, and how we can help you prove what a rock star you really are.