BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - January 10, 2008) - The relationship between sales and marketing
departments has traditionally been a fragmented one; however, as companies
focus on ways to increase sales effectiveness, the mutual sharing of
content and information between sales and marketing has emerged as a method
to increase sales productivity. A recent survey of over 250 companies by
Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS), found that 78% of
Best-in-Class companies provide sales with access to a centralized
repository of marketing materials. As a result of this shared content
between sales and marketing, Best-in-Class companies have improved
time-to-close rates by nearly one day, compared to the increase of one day
in
time-to-close rates experienced by Laggards.
Aberdeen's latest report, "Sales Effectiveness: Leveraging Content to Close
Deals," revealed that the top pressure causing all organizations to devise
ways to increase sales productivity is the constant need to increase market
share. Despite the fact that Best-in-Class companies are 1.8 times as
likely as others to rate themselves as "extremely aligned" in the area of
branding and messaging, there is still a heavy implementation of technology
solutions on the part of Best-in-Class companies to assure that an increase
in sales productivity results in an increase in market share. For example,
Best-in-Class companies utilize sales analytics (61%), content feedback
solutions (39%), and closed-loop marketing (35%) to ensure that the
processes designed to optimize sales win rates are successful. Furthermore,
0% of Best-in-Class companies fail to measure lead conversion rates,
compared to 4% of the Industry Average and 14% of Laggards. Best-in-Class
companies are leveraging their organizational processes, technology
enablers, and performance measurement insight to achieve compelling
results.
"Besides ensuring consistency, automating access to marketing content saves
sales time," explains Gretchen Duhaime, a research analyst at Aberdeen. "If
sales does not have collateral readily available, they are burdened to
create it themselves or work with marketing to draft it, which either takes
sales representatives out of the field or adds to their support staff
workload. Also, the documents they create may not have tried and true
messaging designed to prompt prospects to take action and close the deal."
The report demonstrates the value of implementing key process, performance,
and organizational capabilities to ensure that valuable content is shared
between marketing and sales. By utilizing dedicated operations resources
(83%) and processes for generating customized customer documents (57%),
Best-in-Class companies are able to reduce the amount of time sales
representatives spend on administrative and non-selling tasks.
The research educates readers on how to combine strategic actions,
organizational capabilities, and enabling technologies to define consistent
sales processes and make institutional knowledge readily available to and
easily accessed by the sales force. The report also provides the results
that Best-in-Class companies achieve across key sales metrics after
employing certain processes and technologies and compares these companies
to the Industry Average and Laggards who have not yet pursued a similar
strategy. A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part
by the following underwriters: BigMachines, Apttus, and Dow Jones
SalesWorks. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4200.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
260 Franklin Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02110-3112
Telephone: (617) 723-7890
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Gretchen Duhaime
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(617) 854-5350
Gretchen.Duhaime@aberdeen.com