Sales productivity
Automating Transactional Email
Email newsletters are common method of selling and communicating with customers.
But often overlooked is the idea of using rules-based automation inside the traditional and transactional email exchanges common to the sales process.
Sales people and the marketers that support them can creatively use rules-based email automation to put simple events such as customer birthdays and event [...]
Using Social Media to Enhance Your Sales Effort
The great minds at the CMO Council published a nice piece on the role of social media in the sales effort.
It is a worthwhile read. This article quotes the Aberdeen Group – one of their latest research reports, called Sales 2.0 — Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration, discusses how social media solutions [...]
Does anyone know this joke?
A pig and a chicken are walking down a road. The Chicken looks at the pig and says “Hey, why don’t we open a restaurant?” The pig looks back at the chicken and says “Good idea, what do you want to call it?”
The chicken thinks about it and says “Why don’t we call it [...]
Book review – Making the Number
After reviewing Making the Number, there are a number of points about sales benchmarking that apply to our own theories about marketing.
The scoreboard for sales professional is and always has been the pay stub – this is the crudest form of sales benchmarking. For marketing, it has always been a bit stickier and this is [...]
Thinking about the agency model
What companies want most from their marketing agencies is more sales.
Yet agencies are not set up to do this. In fact, clients aren’t set up for this either. Agencies earn their fees by trading time for dollars and some earn commissions on media spend or printing. Marketing departments manage their vendors as cost centers. [...]
The sales funnel is flawed
http://www.bnet.com/2422-13723_23-201008.html?tag=nl.e808
Mark Sellers, author of “The Funnel Principle,” explains how the traditional sales funnel is flawed and should be flipped on its head as the Buyer’s Funnel. Starting with problem recognition (and an economic cost to the problem) and a commitment to doing something about the problem. Everything in the funnel requires a commitment by the customer. The [...]
Top Grading For Sales – quick book review
On Friday I received a copy of Top Grading for Sales by Bradford Smart and Greg Alexander. I had a long weekend getaway planned so I threw the book into my briefcase and spent some time with it over the weekend.
The book is delightfully short. An easy read.
Great marketing execution is always easier when [...]
What to look for when thinking about outsourcing your lead generation
What to look for when thinking about outsourcing your lead generation
Cold calling, appointment setting and lead generation is unpleasant and difficult.
It takes a tough soul to call 100 people per day (100 people who know nothing about you) with a canned sales pitch while expecting a return call, appointment or a sale.
It’s no [...]
Looking for sales? Find the bully with the juice.
Great post from Steve Martin at Sandhill.com – tips and thoughts for selling software in a recession.
The Bully with the Juice is the company’s equivalent of emperor Caesar. Only he can give his thumb up or down on the life-or-death decision to spend the company’s money. So even though you have won the evaluation and [...]
Don’t sweat marketing measurement
Any marketing measurement system based solely on circulation, clicks, impressions, advertising equivalency or whatever is flawed.
The only measurement that matters is measurement that truly shows how effective you are at reaching your customers.
Traditional B2B marketing measurement is especially tough because anything you do impacts everything else you do. How does your PR impact your [...]
