Insights

Sales Coverage

You don’t. At least not the way you are doing it today. It’s frustrating. Although, it is not from a lack of trying. I have seen the better sales teams form pyramid structures with layers of prioritization based on some sort of customer scoring and …

Lead Generation and Nurturing

On a fairly regular basis, I hear marketers lament the challenge of finding more profitable customers. Ultimately, this boils down to a lot of different decisions, but core to finding more profitable customers is better targeting. Targeting allows marketers to shift from broad reach impressions …

Buyer Journeys, Lead Generation and Nurturing, Marketing Operations

As a seasoned marketer, one of your daily challenges likely involves better understanding your customers. You know it has never been more crucial to do so, because the only way you can generate demand for your products or services is if you truly offer the …

Digital Sales

The time has come for your website redesign. You and your team have been dreaming of this moment for months, even years now. So, let’s roll up our sleeves, toss the old site aside and get the creative juices flowing. But wait! Before you say …

Customer Retention, Marketing Operations

Let’s do a little exercise. Scenario 1: You receive an invitation to join a loyalty program at Store A, where you have shopped once or twice before. You are notified that you get 10% off of your purchase if you join the rewards program, therefore …

Other

I used to run sales training sessions for direct B2B-focused sales teams. A portion of the session always focused on great questions sales people should ask their prospects. However, when you run a working session and ask the sales people what questions they use, you …

Marketing Analytics

Want to help your sales team close more deals this quarter? Predictive analytics can give you results in a week or two. I have been working directly with sales leaders for over six years and one of my favorite things is the look of surprise …

Other

Nurture campaigns have recently sparked the interest of marketers. They are now paying close attention to trending engagement tactics that result in higher conversion rates. That being said, it’s not easy to launch a nurture campaign. A best practice would suggest to run a pilot …

Other

Every 20 to 30 years Retail goes through a seismic change that transforms the way in which we engage and service our customers. There was the shift away from the 1-on-1, highly consultative sales in the early 60s to the world of big-box and multi-category …

Other

This happened to me. While driving home from work, I realized I had nothing for my wife’s birthday the next day. I stopped at her favorite store hoping to walk out with an acceptable present. My hopes were not high. A pleasant sales associate greeted …

Marketing Analytics, Marketing ROI

Marketing spend is on the upswing as the economic outlook and other key metrics trend up. One interesting statistic in the latest CMO survey, which indicates that marketers expect to spend more on marketing analytics. Current analytic spend is 7.1% of total marketing budgets and …

Content Marketing

Content Marketing was the biggest buzz-term in Marketing in 2013 and by the looks of it 2014 is no different. However, whereas as in 2013 organizations were primarily focused on creating an array of content, in 2014 they need to focus their efforts on creating …

Lead Generation and Nurturing

I was recently at a lunch forum with over 20 sales and marketing executives from a variety of industries and the topic of connecting marketing and sales came up. So did the interest level. The lunch event was over-capacity and included a great cross section …

Digital Sales

The Ultimate Guide to the New Buyer’s Journey – Part 3: Prevent Customer Detours Through Digital Engagement We established in Part 1 that digital and online channels are playing a significant role in the new buyer’s journey. Organizations need to create digital strategies for multiple …

Other

B2B Customers have clearly changed how they conduct their buying process. Their expectations have changed as it relates to their process of evaluating product or service options, self-educating, participating in decision making groups, and ultimately deciding on and making a purchase. Customers now spend significantly …

Buyer Journeys

The Ultimate Guide to the New Buyer’s Journey – Part 2: Does Your Segmentation Lead the Way? Part of the power of the new buying behavior is the opportunity associated with the millions of touchpoints which customers make with your online platforms. This data (when …

Sales Coverage

In a recent article, Forrester Research notes that the goal of social-to-sales efforts should be “to see how well social is driving customers toward the actions that create value for your company,” as opposed to just collecting Likes, Followers or +1s. Whereas the early days …

Marketing ROI

Does your current business intelligence (BI) solution really support your business processes by enabling you and your team to draw intelligence and actionable insights from marketing and sales activity? For most organizations the answer is “No”, making the “BI” moniker a bit ironic. Most organizations …

Other

The Ultimate Guide to the New Buyer’s Journey – Part 1: What is the New Buyer’s Journey? We’ve all seen the stats from Gartner and Forrester by 2020, more than 80% of the buying process will occur without any direct human-to-human interaction. As a result, …

Other

Type “cold calling is dead” into a basic Google search and you receive over 50,000,000 search results. Many of which are provocative thought pieces around the shift in buying behavior and how technology has made the cold call obsolete. I agree that cold calling has …

Digital Sales

If you haven’t yet heard the newest buzzword in Sales and Marketing, be prepared to hear it a lot in 2014. So, what is Digital Sales Coverage? Before we define it, I find it helpful to think through the changes in commercial models that led …

Channel Partner Enablement

It’s a new era in channel engagement. If you are a company that relies on a third party to sell and support your products and services, then you have noticed that your world has changed, and…you are not alone! Your partners face the same challenges …

Content Marketing

“Fish Where the Fish Are Swimming.” It’s an old, oft-referenced axiom in Marketing. In essence: don’t waste your time casting a wide net. Focus your energy on finding where your customers are, and engage them in the perfect moment to hook and reel them in. …

Other

The core element in creating marketing and sales connectivity is the effectiveness of the lead management and lead qualification processes. Organizations cannot establish trust between marketing and sales if the lead hand off process is broken or ineffective. Marketing must have the ability to qualify …

Digital Sales

In an earlier blog post I discussed an emerging trend we are seeing when we engage with sales and marketing leaders to discuss how their businesses are changing in order to align to new customer buying behaviors. This new trend is a shift in the …