Sitecore has powerful features designed to attract large visitor numbers to your website and keep them there! These include real time personalization to deliver targeted content, component popularity testing to make sure content you do show is perfect, and advanced forms to collect visitor details. The marketing team has control over these features but after the visitor submits the web form, or another call to action, their job is usually finished and the skills of a proficient salesperson is required to convert the lead to a paying customer.

The sales team typically work out of a CRM like Salesforce, and interact with individuals one-to-one. They need to show empathy, focus, professionalism and knowledge about their products during the conversation. Achieving these capabilities is not easy, requiring competency across the product range, and foreseeing the customer’s budget, authority, needs and timeline (BANT). Having this information and being confident before any sales call is essential and Sitecore analytics can play a big part in this.

So how do we inspire the sales team with confidence? Sitecore closely tracks the browsing activities of website visitors. Engagement values and goals can be assigned to each visitor when they view or interact with predetermined web components. This is the information that Sitecore personalization uses to determine what will be shown next to the visitor but it is equally valuable in the hands of the sales team. Consider how important the following information would be prior to a sales call:

• What was the visitor’s level of interest in the product?
  • Over a period of time, how often did they return to the website?
  • What search phrase did they enter?
  • How many times did they view the product page?
  • How long did they dwell?
  • What did they not see – like upsell features and warranty extensions?
• What else were they interested in?
  • Which product categories did they view?
  • Which other product detail pages were viewed?
  • Did they view the About Us page?
• Website performance
  • How did they find you - the referral source?
  • What was the call to action (web form, email click through etc.)?
  • What journey led them to the call to action?

None of this intelligence can be gleaned from a normal web form submission, yet it is clear that having the information will give the sales team significant prospect insight and confidence prior to a sales call.

How do you make this happen? Integrating Sitecore to Salesforce as an example, products like FuseIT’s S4S integration, can push Sitecore analytics, and the form field data, to Salesforce leads and contacts when a visitor submits a web form. The sales team don’t require Sitecore skills, just the realization that this intelligence, in Salesforce and used effectively, will significantly improve their close ratio.

Contact us now to see how this works with Sitecore and Salesforce!