Turbocharge Salesforce Integration for Sales and Marketing Alignment

Methodology

The procedures described in this article also cover our Pardot Salesforce integration.

As the modern sales and marketing director or CXO brings his or her company up to speed through its digital transformation phase, there’s much more work to be done than simply digitizing and automating their B2B sales and marketing department using out of the box solutions. As sales and marketing teams become more and more closely integrated and intertwined, they now face the problem of integrating their marketing and sales management systems to penetrate their B2B sector. The marketing department is racing through the pipeline with their HubSpot or Pardot implementation, while the sales department lives and works in their Salesforce CRM. The two departments talk together, and management encourages this new sales + marketing (smarketing) ecosystem to communicate and thrive, but are the platforms themselves communicating properly and efficiently?

Below, we’ve outlined the core of our Integrated Solution as well as our methodology for designing an implementation plan customized to the needs of your organization.

We empower your organization with a combination of Pipeline Marketing, Smarketing, and Analytics.

What is Pipeline Marketing?

Let’s define a few key things to understand when we discuss the strategies of a modern sales and marketing approach. B2B Pipeline marketing and Smarketing both share a common set of goals-- a top level approach to the entire sales and marketing process-- but there's an important distinction between the two. Pipeline marketing is the process whereby sales and marketing are brought together around the common goal of generating revenue. Lead generation, qualification, and other steps along the way are the tools that make this possible, but by focusing on the sale at the end of the sales funnel (the "pipeline"), the revenue itself becomes the focal point, increasing revenue overall.

What is Smarketing?

Smarketing on the other hand (sometimes referred to as s-marketing or Smarketing) is the process of integrating sales and marketing efforts within an organization. Most simply, B2B Smarketing is bringing a sales team into alignment with a marketing team, forming a sales and marketing ("Smarketing") team with common goals and identified opportunities. This is done through frequent communication, establishment of mutually integrated roles, and accountabilities shared by the teams.

The Importance of an Integrated Solution

What then, is the solution achieving our integrated B2B sales and marketing goals? Thousands of companies in the US alone have subscribed to the services of Salesforce and HubSpot, as directors begin the digital transformation and then apply modern best practices to their sales and marketing teams. They have both platforms set up, and now have their hands on two very potent new tools-- HubSpot for marketing automation and Salesforce for CRM. Perhaps they have even begun to integrate the two using an “out-of-the-box” integration solution. Unfortunately, currently solutions only “map and sync” data between the two platforms. This alone won’t suffice-- an expert level approach is often necessary to ensure proper implementation every step of the way.

Data migration is a great place to start, but if best Smarketing practices are to be implemented, we must define and develop a methodology that provides an infrastructure to streamline both platforms to their full capacity. Teams can focus on the most important goal-- identifying the best opportunities that lead to conversion and revenue. An enhanced HubSpot Salesforce sync would allow marketing teams to more comprehensively partner with sales teams, so that sales may improve on several fronts.

Some of these benefits would include:

1. Improving the customer experience by responding to customer request and behavior in real time, amidst a rapidly increasing demand for a “rapid responsive” level of service. With better integration, sales teams will be able to understand the needs of their customers more fully and be able to better tailor the customer conversation as a result.
2. Sales teams will be provided with better-qualified leads, and be able to better qualify these leads themselves, allowing them to focus on just the highest quality of leads. This leads itself to the development of a healthier pipeline, increasing the rate of revenue growth overall.
3. Sales teams will also be able to respond to leads more quickly, engaging customers more effectively, and putting the company ahead of their competition.

The benefits are clear, as is the need for such an integrated solution for digital transformation in the market, but such a solution has not existed… until now.

Our Solution and Implementation Strategy

The solution for HubSpot Salesforce integration is composed of three main phases: Design, Build and Scale, and Process Optimization. Let’s dive into each phase in more detail.

Design Phase: Discovery and Planning

Design Phase begins with learning about the existing processes in marketing and sales an organization has, then to adapt and customize the solution in adherence with the best practices of what HubSpot and Salesforce sync will offer. From here, we enter discovering precisely which steps in the pipeline require most attention and which elements of your marketing strategy will have the greatest and most actionable effect on revenue. From here we work together to design a plan which can be effectively implemented and followed through on. We consider every possible modular piece of your team needs and resources, examine data hygiene, and communication elements, to comprehensively incorporate these into both the integration and your larger digital transformation roadmap. We consider much more than just application integration

We ask ourselves: how may we more fully use all tools and existing best applicable practices at our disposal within Salesforce and HubSpot, as well as in conjunction with these applications, to develop the most comprehensively robust toolset possible? Such modern tools may include automation, big data and analytics, AI and machine learning, chatbots for lead qualification and customer service management at scale, and advanced business intelligence metrics.

We ask ourselves: how may we more fully use all tools and existing best applicable practices at our disposal within Salesforce and Hubspot, as well as in conjunction with these applications, to develop the most comprehensively robust toolset possible? Such modern tools may include automation, big data and analytics, AI and machine learning, chatbots for lead qualification and customer service management at scale, and advanced business intelligence metrics.

Build and Scale Phase: Implementation and Workflow Automation

Now comes the fun part: Build and Scale.

This phase is where we roll up our sleeves and dive into the nitty gritty of the build. Here, we see the actual implementation, including Apex coding and the definition of rules on the Salesforce side, along with workflow automation and lead scoring on the HubSpot side. We consider everything, from your company size, number and complexity of your applications, IT infrastructure, sensitivity of your shared data, and even the types of users and services accessing the data. From here, we utilize custom and state of the art integration tools and APIs, along with AI and machine learning, to understand and provide the perfect solution for your application integration infrastructure.

We configure AI to execute smart tasks and make predictions, then take actions based on these predictions. Rules are created to automate software tasks that would previously be handled by a team member, freeing your teams up to focus more on the big picture and get less bogged down in the mundane and routine tasks of the past. This is known as digital process automation. We empower sales teams and increase revenue by first automating a multitude of tasks on the side of the marketing team, saving them time and allowing them to better focus on what they are here to do: take a qualified lead effectively through the funnel, in an efficient manner every step of the way.

We migrate data as necessary and ensure it is properly implemented, cleaning up and eliminating errors along the way to ensure best practices for perfect data hygiene. We prepare, we extract, then we map how everything will connect and communicate. From here, we load, test, and validate. Any issues with data hygiene and cleaning up what we find once the data is synced between the two systems we address as necessary. We are with you every step of the process to ensure you get exactly what you need from your digital transformation, and stay with you in the years to follow. Not only will your business be more efficient and generate more revenue, but you can rest easy knowing that everything has been set up properly from the start, and you can continue to scale upwards from there. The resulting new business superpowers affect positive change not just for sales, marketing, and revenue, but for your business model and company through greater B2B market penetration.

Process Optimization Phase: KPI’s, Reporting, Assessment, and Analytics

Once we have planned, designed, built, and implemented, now comes the critical final phase of optimization. Key performance indicators, reporting tools, and analytics are all implemented to ensure you consistently get the most out of your integration. As your teams more effectively collaborate,  your pipeline grows. We shine light on your collaborations and business processes to allow your team leaders and management to make the best decisions possible through newly provided insights. Using big data and analytics we provide these business insights and intelligence in an easy to understand format, showing where you’ve been, where you’re at today, and where your business is on track to go. Better information means better decisions, which ultimately mean lower risk and a healthier company overall. AI takes these big data sets and interprets them for us in the most efficient manner possible.

Study more:

B2B pipeline optimization model in Salesforce Sales and marketing alignment

Salesforce sales and marketing alignment in integration scenarios

Bringing It All Back Home

While there are many moving parts to consider, we hope you walk away with a better understanding of how everything works in tandem. Better communication, more efficient automation, keener insights, and better decisions all work together in a positive feedback loop grow revenue, transform your company, and ultimately provide a healthier and more productive business ecosystem as a whole; from sales and marketing all the way up to executive and management roles and all backed by measurable ROI and B2B market penetration.

When you integrate and transform your business the right way, truly everyone wins.