23
2013Death of a Salesman????
No, this isn’t an article about Arthur Miller’s Pulitzer Prize winning play about Willy Loman. Instead, I want to put to bed that the need for sales people has diminished recently due to the paradigm shift in the sophistication of buyers. Granted, the Internet has allowed buyers to search for what they need long before they engage with a sales person. But, that takes into…
16
2013Sales Enablement brings about Sales & Marketing Alignment
I just finished a great research brief “Sales Enablement: Fulfilling the Last Frontier of Marketing-Sales Alignment”, from Peter Ostrow and Trip Kucera of the Aberdeen Group. In it they make some excellent points around the value of having a Sales Enablement process to better align Marketing and Sales. The relationship between B2B marketing and sales teams is more than just about leads and lead management….
26
2013Keeping your Sales & Marketing teams Accountable
Where does accountability lie within your organization and how do you go about holding people accountable for their performance, or lack thereof? I know a lot of organizations have annual reviews that are conducted by HR or an immediate supervisor of how an individual is performing. Depending on the organization these can be very helpful and detailed or just fluff. It all depends on who…
06
2013Do You Have a Repeatable, Sustainable Profile for Success?
I was having a discussion with a good friend of mine recently and we were talking about how most organizations don’t have a repeatable, sustainable profile for how they achieve success. What we were referring to was the need for organizations to be able to have a clear understanding of how they are successful in winning business. For many organizations, they can give you an…
07
2013Success is 90% Preparation, 10% Perspiration
We’ve all heard the adage “Success is 90% preparation and only 10% perspiration”. The great scientist Louis Pasteur once said, “Chance favors the prepared mind”. This is an area that I believe needs to be addressed more effectively by sales people and the organizations they work for today. So, let me start by asking: Are your sales people as prepared and effective as they need…
01
2013Do you really know what’s working and what isn’t in your sales, marketing and product areas?
I had a very interesting and enlightening conversation today with a consultant who works for the company that developed my website. She asked me to tell her who my target audience was and who I was trying to reach. I explained to her that my target audiences were medium to large-sized organizations that were struggling with poor sales and marketing alignment, effectiveness and productivity. She…
18
2013How Important is Sales Enablement to Your Organization?
What exactly is Sales Enablement anyway? Well, there are two really good definitions that I like to quote. The first definition is provided by the Forrester Group: “Sales Enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life…
02
2013Great Things Happen When People Collaborate
I’m not sure whether you have noticed the number of discussions, articles, webinars and postings around the whole concept of collaborating. Obviously, there is a lot of value in being able to do just that and it comes out in a number of different ways. One of the ways that we see collaboration working a lot is through the creation of something. That something could…
20
2013Top 10 Reasons Why Your Marketing Team is Failing You and How To Fix Them
My good friend Michael Cannon, who is the CEO of the Silver Bullet Group (www.silverbulletgroup.com), is clearly one of the top people in the industry that I believe consistently has the inside track on what Marketing organizations can do to be more effective. With his permission, I am presenting his article and hope that you, too, will become a follower of Michael and the Silver Bullet…