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When you think of journey management, you probably envision the path brands use to acquire, onboard, engage and retain customers. But as you’re about to discover, those same strategies can be used to communicate with employees.
In the Inside View series, we’re unveiling some unique and unexpected ways teams across the Salesforce organization leverage Marketing Cloud. We recently discussed how we use Journey Builder, Email and Mobile to drive adoption of the Salesforce1 App, and we’ll soon describe how Marketing Cloud enables Salesforce to onboard new employees in HR, then how it equips our Events Team to deliver great experiences for attendees. First, let’s check out how our Competitive Intelligence team uses Marketing Cloud and its features to empower our account executives to win deals.
Every sales team is comprised of account executives with varying degrees of tenure. Some are seasoned professionals with decades of experience, while others are early in their careers. Regardless, they all share one thing in common: They must know how to defeat the competition.
At Salesforce, we have a team dedicated to studying our competitors and their offerings. Their job is to understand the competition’s strengths and weaknesses, then equip our salespeople with the knowledge they need to win. The challenge? We have thousands of account executives, and at any given time, each is working on numerous opportunities. Providing them with the intelligence they need for every deal—precisely when they need it—wouldn’t be possible without the Marketing Cloud.
Of course, it comes as no surprise that Salesforce account executives use Sales Cloud to manage their pipelines. It enables them to track their leads and opportunities, as well as which solutions and companies they’re competing with in each deal.
Through integration between Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, any time a competitor is identified, Journey Builder detects it. This triggers a simple email journey to ensure the account executive receives timely insights and competitive advantage.
As Journey Builder identifies a competitor within an opportunity, the corresponding sales rep enters into the Competitive Intelligence email journey. An initial email provides them with collateral and links to all of the assets they need to close the deals they’re associated with within Sales Cloud.
If they open the email to see the links to the tailored enablement assets, they exit this journey and are entered into another. Of course, account executives are busy, and sometimes they get behind on their emails. If they don’t open the email after three days, a second email is sent to remind them the assets are available. Again, the latest data is used and if a new opportunity has been entered, it will be included. Likewise, deals that have closed will be excluded.
Although the Competitive Intelligence journey was only recently introduced, early results have been impressive. Of the nearly 3,000 emails that were sent as part of the launch, over 70% were opened. As a result, more and more members of our sales team are engaging with the right content to help them win deals faster.
Watch out competition!
Journey management isn’t just for customers any more. Whether you’re looking to help your sales team be more successful, need to help new employees get onboard and productive more quickly, or you name it, Marketing Cloud is equally effective at internal communications as it is external. To find out more about how it can help your business drive engagement, check out the Salesforce for Marketers eBook.
