When someone is ready to buy or calling you to learn how your solution can solve a problem, sales is certainly more enjoyable. The less enjoyable part is engaging great prospects that do not know you – yet!
In days long ago, there was the “just go to their office” cold call. There is the phone – cold calling. No one loves that […]
For all of us involved in selling to B2B (particularly manufacturing) prospects, answering the question – What is a lead?
The short answer is one of two definitions “a new potential relationship” or “a reason to check in with an existing relationship.” You are fortunate if 10% of the leads you identify are “ready to buy” or what many in sales term “sales ready” – ready for a quote for at least what they believe they […]
We have arrived at the #5 thing I believe every CEO should know about marketing. In case you are new to the series, you can find #1 – #4 (The “Ante”, Not all marketing is the same, B2B buyer journey, and B2B website purpose) in our blog.
#5 is about alignment – specifically marketing and sales alignment around one specific definition. There are certainly many […]
This third blog post of the “7 things a CEO needs to know about marketing” series focuses on the B2B buyer journey. You may believe your company sells stuff to the market – like your products or services, however, that is your seller view and not a buyer view. You indeed have products and services, and you definitely engage in activities that lead to sales but the truth is people are buying what they need […]
The goal of any B2B lead generation program is to ultimately generate as many actionable leads as possible for the sales team. There are certainly plenty of topics around an approach, but the one area I want to focus on now is the absolute commitments that marketing and sales must make to each other to create an environment that will produce success.
At the heart of any B2B lead generation program must be an ongoing cycle […]
One very obvious phenomenon during the COVID-19 crisis has been the great increase in online live and recorded webinars and full-on virtual events (multi-session events). We have been directly involved in increasing the use of both and both creating and project managing these events. Here are some best practices for today’s virtual events to keep in mind:
Develop guidelines for the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)
Some SMEs have done webinars, and some have not, but we’ve learned […]
Do stay-at-home B2B salespeople perform differently?
This week I had an interesting conversation with one of my clients. He manages a B2B sales team and pointed out an interesting statistic that has emerged regarding how his sales team is performing during this “stay-at-home” period. Basically, his sales team has improved by 70% in terms of the average time for first follow-up on leads. In other words, while his […]
There are many ways that marketing and sales go about measuring their efforts for their own purpose. You have marketing waterfall reports. You have sales forecast reports. You have sales activity reports. You have marketing media metrics. But what about the kind of report that sales and marketing should share together and talk about the most? Which reporting creates the right marketing-sales conversation about leads?
Two reports that ask/answer the right questions for a conversation
While some […]
Note: Be sure to check out the Trade Show Dollar Challenge at the end of this post.
Putting trade show dollars to work. Many companies are tightly squeezing their dollars right now, and that is understandable. One easy target is to pocket unspent or refunded trade show dollars as quick savings. This too is understandable. However, what if you can save a good portion of those 2020 trade show dollars while also investing today in a […]
For many businesses today, the first reaction to the current social and economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic is to cut costs by downsizing staff or reducing paid hours, by shutting down production, or other measures. Every business will have to make hard choices. However, if your business, any type of business, firmly believes that you will survive this and you want to grow quickly after this is over, then you need to remember […]