I was recently talking to a marketing executive at a mid-sized software company, and he brought up a problem he was having with “closing the loop” between marketing’s lead generation efforts and the sales team’s revenue output.  He mentioned that while the company had recently invested in a CRM solution and some accompanying marketing automation software, that there was still missing data, incorrect data, and a general distaste for the new solution within the sales team.

Having run into this situation a number of times, I followed with three simple questions:

Question 1: Who actually implemented the CRM/marketing automation solution for you?

Answer: We used an outside consultant who focuses on these specific types of implementations.

Question 2: Who built the process and rules surrounding the treatment of leads both inside and outside the CRM solution?

Answer: The same guy, the CRM consultant.

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Some companies call it Current News.  Others call it Company News.  Still others call it Latest News.  That part doesn’t really matter.  What matters is that you keep the content updated, relevant and consistent for your website visitors.

To further clarify, what I am referring to is the section of a corporate website that contains company news, sometimes in the form of press releases, sometimes in the form of articles in which the company was included, sometimes (hopefully) both.  I visited the website of a prospective software client today, and for the umpteenth time I discovered a newsroom filled with press releases and articles from 2006.  While there are a number of problems with this, I’ll try to sum it up briefly. 

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