Hey, Sales Managers: How Do You Effectively Manage 200+ Target Accounts?
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 …
Read MoreTargeted Marketing – To Infinity and Beyond
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 …
Read MoreHow Marketing Automation Can Help You Better Engage with Customers
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 …
Read More5 Website Analyses You Must Conduct Before Your Next Website Redesign
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 …
Read MoreUses for Marketing Automation, Aside from Lead Nurturing & Scoring
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 …
Read MoreTwo Questions Every Executive is Asking This Morning….
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 …
Read MoreHelp Sales Close Deals Faster with Predictive 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 …
Read More5 Steps to Building a Successful Nurture Engine
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 …
Read MoreTimes They Are A-Changin’… Especially for Retailers.
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 …
Read MoreGet Personal: 5 Steps to Clienteling Success
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 …
Read MoreGrowing Your Marketing Math: 3 Places to Invest Incremental Marketing Analytics Budget
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 …
Read MoreContent for Every Stage of the Journey
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 …
Read MoreHey B2B Marketers; Sales Doesn’t Care About Conversion Rates
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 …
Read MorePart 3 – Prevent Customer Detours Through Digital Engagement
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 …
Read MoreB2B Buyers are Changing How They Buy; Are You Changing How You Sell?
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 …
Read MorePart 2 – Segmentation Must Be The First Step
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 …
Read MoreHow to Achieve Success with Social Selling
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 …
Read MoreGet Better Reporting: Put the “Intelligence” Back Into Your BI Solution
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 …
Read MoreWhat Is the New Buyer’s Journey?
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, …
Read MoreCold Calling is Far From Dead
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 …
Read MoreWhat is Digital Sales Coverage?
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 …
Read MoreThe Key to Channel Engagement: Help Your Partners Help Themselves
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 …
Read MoreDon’t Cast A Wide Net, Build the Pond: Taking the Long-View in Customer Engagement
“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. …
Read MorePart 7 – Lead Scoring is the Key to Sales Productivity
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 …
Read MoreThe New Sales Coverage Model – Using Digital & Data to Drive Productivity
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 …
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