Want to learn four of the most important ways to get the most from SharpSpring marketing automation? Whether you are considering investing in SharpSpring marketing automation or you already have, getting the most out of it is a function of your strategy and plan.
Feed a crappy strategy and plan of action for sales and marketing results into SharpSpring, or any other serious marketing automation application, and you are certain to get crappy results. Duh. Same with not following up, not feeding your blog, not keeping up with your email list, and not tracking all of your key business relationships in a system you like and trust enough to use every day you go to work.
If you want to get better sales and marketing results you need to commit to a long term plan to use it, learn it, feed it and watch it grow. SharpSpring will feed you and your company when you give it what it needs.
Warning …
If you as the owner of the company or leader of your team show up as a slacker in any way, if you don’t follow the plan of action your people develop with you, if you short circuit the training and support for SharpSpring, if you try to do it all yourself, you will be deeply disappointed.
We don’t want you to be disappointed in the marketing automation choices you make. Whether it’s SharpSpring marketing automation or not, it’s up to you to know the rules of the game and hire a professional driver so you don’t take your new marketing automation and sales enablement machine into a wall of fire because you don’t know how to drive it.
Full disclosure …
CME is a really happy SharpSpring partner. We sell SharpSpring to the clients we help with their go-to-market planning and strategy. For us, SharpSpring and all other true sales and marketing automation applications need to be driven by people who have at least 10,000 hours working in them, driving them, breaking them, and fixing them so small businesses can win races, close sales and grow companies.
We have implemented hundreds of successful strategies and action plans using SharpSpring marketing automation, InfusionSoft (Boo!), Hubspot, Act On and so on. The list of software companies competing for your marketing automation business is growing and you need to know how to buy what is best for you and feed the beast so it produces a sales result you can see.
Want to get better sales and marketing results using SharpSpring or not?
Focus on these four elements to build, manage and crush your go-to-market strategy and plan of action.
#1: Keep An Eye On The Big Picture
One of the first things I teach SharpSpring users how to do is “see the big picture.” After all, our core discipline is crafting strategy and action plans for getting better sales and marketing results. Now comes the action.
What better way to see the big picture in terms of activities when you first login? This is the login view for SharpSpring and it reveals a number of really helpful numbers for a high level view of activities and sales and marketing results.
Remember, your daily view of activities is all about the follow through action you committed to in your plan. So if you don’t login, or if you don’t pay attention to the big picture including the activities and key performance indicators that count for you, who do you really blame?
This is an easy way for you to see what’s going on.
2. Track Your Marketing Campaign ROI Easier
How do you see your sales and marketing ROI today? If you don’t know what your ROI is, how do you make informed decisions with your sales, marketing and technology investments? Heck, if people manage their money this way they end up broke. So don’t screw around when it comes to knowing the numbers that count the most.
This is the SharpSpring Campaign Insights view. SharpSpring makes it easy to track your sales and marketing campaign ROI if you know what cost inputs and units of measure you want. This means you can set your SharpSpring campaigns to track cost per lead and many more elements that tell you where your money is working for you and where your money is working against you.
3. Follow The Money Flowing Through Your Sales Pipeline
This is one of the most popular features of SharpSpring. It gives me and the teams we work with a clear view of where we are with money coming in the door. The dollars are weighted by the probability for a close. The probabilities and other pipeline variables are customized for the team and sales process. Most sales process we craft have five stages. This keeps it simple. You’ll see in the next view that SharpSpring makes it easy to see exactly who is where in your pipeline so you can talk through each Opportunity with the sales person who owns the deal.
SharpSpring marketing automation becomes a true sales enablement system because when the sales team and owners commit to adding every contact, every new sales opportunity, and proper notes, tasks and updates for tracking prospects through a sales pipeline, we see sales results boom.
But guess what? Most companies mean well when they invest in SharpSpring and other marketing automation platforms, but they are completely lame when it comes to using and learning how to make these systems work. Normally this starts at the top with a weak follow through by CEOs, owners and leaders. For example, when you have this data every minute of every day, and your key people stop showing up for the performance review meetings we hold virtually every week, you may have a problem.
This is why the pipeline view we see in SharpSpring is so powerful.
4. Focus On Managing Relationships Through Your Sales Pipeline
This is a rather lame screen shot for how to see your prospects move through your sales pipeline. What this is showing is each contact a salesperson has made into an opportunity. So it’s the sales opportunities you see here that we get to talk about as a sales team at least once a week. We do this because it’s one of the best ways for a team to learn how to move more prospects through a pipeline to closing a sale.
SharpSpring let’s you drag and drop these opportunities across the board when you’re reviewing them with the sales team or doing it one-on-one. The truth is that SharpSpring is also tracking the lead scores, notes, tasks and internal notifications that help a management, sales and marketing team work as one on their strategy and action plan.
Seeing is believing. Going over this every week is learning. That’s how you close more sales.
Now that you know the four most important ways to crush it with SharpSpring, please know this …
There is no single marketing automation application or any other software solution that is perfect. You have to choose what is best for you and commit to investing in the creative content that drives results.
Your results really depend on how well you plan and integrate sales, marketing, people and tech. SharpSpring and all other automation systems are run by people. People need to learn how to use these systems. This requires a full time commitment to do it at the level we do it.
If you want better sales, marketing and business results focus on your strategy and plan. Then invest in and optimize SharpSpring or the marketing automation system of choice.
How could the conversion marketing experts help you better sales and marketing results? Ask us about helping you write a killer plan.