What is lead generation?

How ECI Telecom Discovered the Surefire Sign that Sales and Marketing Are Aligned

If you’re among the roughly half of B2B companies that have strong alignment between your sales and marketing teams, then congratulations! Your salespeople are your biggest fans, right? If not, then you’re probably not as aligned as you think. Michelle Mogelson Levy, Associate Vice President of Marketing Programs, ECI Telecom, learned this the hard way. […]

B2B Lead Generation: Top tactics for a crisis-proof strategy

Most lead-generation marketers are not in crisis, but many could use an orderly process to help combat challenges. See the top tactics for a crisis-proof lead-generation strategy, according the MarketingSherpa research.

Cisco Video: Uncovering Trends and Best Practices in Lead Generation

This week I was in San Francisco doing a live, streamed presentation, Uncovering Trends and Best Practices in Lead Generation, for Cisco. It’s part of their on-going Partner Velocity Program which provides in-person events, in-depth resources, and online marketing tutorials to their value-added resellers worldwide. I believe Cisco sets the standard for how to engage […]

Want a Bigger Marketing Budget? Send Fewer Leads to Sales

According to MarketingSherpa’s just-released 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, a whopping 80 percent of the 935 respondents said they pass unqualified leads along to sales. That’s a costly mistake, considering only 4 to 7 percent of raw leads are ready to buy.

Challenges and Trends of Lead Generation in 2011

The economic pressure is not letting up and 2011 will demand more of B2B marketers than ever before. How can you deliver what CEOs most want – quality leads – within tight timelines and even tighter budgets? Where should you place your priorities? How can you rapidly make an impact on your company’s revenue capacity, […]

B2B Marketers: Success Begins with Better Leads, Not More of Them

According to MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, the vast majority of B2B marketers see producing better leads – not more of them – as the most important business challenge. A free webinar, Trends and Challenges of Lead Generation in 2011, and a white paper B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment: How to Drive Collaboration for Higher ROI, can help you meet that challenge.

B2B Lead Generation Roundtable: A Heated Sales and Marketing Alignment Debate

When members of the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable on LinkedIn were asked how companies can improve alignment between sales and marketing, the debate heated up quickly.

Learn the New Rules for Selling to Crazy-Busy Prospects

For those of us in marketing and sales, our jobs are even tougher thanks to the busy lives of the decision makers we’re trying to reach. Overwhelmed, impossible deadlines, crazy busy – these are just some of the words today’s decision makers are using to describe their lives at work – and probably outside of […]

BtoB Lead Generation Guide just published

BtoB Magazine just published their 2010 Lead Generation Guide. The guide contains information about trends, expert columns, market statistics and vendor lists. Here’s a few of the articles that I found relevant in the guide: Social media tips for demand generation Maximizing online content to fuel conversations, conversions Creating e-mails that generate leads Finding new […]

5 Steps To Creating A Lead Gen Machine – The Predictable Revenue That CEOs Love

In a recent post, I talked about the most important B2B marketing metrics to CEO’s or what I believe CEO’s should be measuring. All too often Marketing is measuring one thing while the CEO’s are asking a question those measurements don’t answer. The biggest challenge for marketers is the quality vs. quantity tug-of-war. I think […]

100 Tips for Trade Show Lead Generation

Lead generation remains the top reason most companies exhibit at events and tradeshows. And B2B marketers are constantly looking for ideas they can use to drive more ROI from their events budget. I came across this helpful post by Mike Thimmesch on 100 Trade Show Lead Generation Ideas that are worth checking out. Tradeshow lead generation […]

LinkedIn B2B Lead Generation Roundtable Group Turns One

Last year, I launched the B2B Lead Gen Roundtable Group on LinkedIn. It started with a simple goal: to create a group to discuss and share ideas that focus on the many aspects of B2B lead generation such as lead nurturing, lead management, teleprospecting, social media and more. We didn’t start the group to become the […]

Lead Generation 2.0 Critical Success Factor #9 Effectiveness

I recently wrote about the 8 critical success factors for lead generation 2.0. Then #9 came to mind – effectiveness. Simply put, make the most of what you have. Its too easy to fall into the trap of selling everything to everybody, or deluding yourself that the reason for more leads isn’t access to endless […]

Lead scoring thoughts to share

Recently, I’ve been having more conversations with marketers about lead scoring and how they can use it as a part of the overall lead qualification and nurturing process. The question “what is lead scoring?” also came up during the “Broad Reach + Intelligent Lead Nurturing = Increased Revenue” webinar I participated in yesterday with Scott […]

Online Lead Generation: How to optimize forms to convert window shoppers into leads

As I’ve written before, when dealing with the complex sale, most people aren’t coming to your website to buy; they’re coming to your site for information. And people are hesitant about giving up too much info on forms before you’ve earned their trust. Have you thought about your web forms? How much information are you […]

Lead Generation via Search: Comparing Quantity and Quality

Have you wondered about where you should put your online lead generation budget into search engine optimization or paid search? Check out this new chart by MarketingSherpa, “Comparing the Quantity and Quality of B2B Search-Generated Leads“: (click chart to expand) According to Sherpa, “While paid search gives marketers more control, natural search page rankings driven […]

The Best 20 CRM Blogs of 2009

Forecasting Clouds ranked the top 20 CRM blogs based on their content, readability, and frequency of posting. As I read over the list of blogs, I discovered some new ones worth reading. I follow some of the blogs like John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing Blog; Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba who write the Church of […]

LinkedIn for lead generation – Are You the Missing Link?

It takes time and commitment, but LinkedIn has become ideal venue to nurture relationships and generate new leads, especially for sales people involved in a complex sale. On that topic, I wrote an guest article for MarketingProfs, titled “10 Tips for Using LinkedIn to Generate Leads.” MarketingProfs decided to make it a “premium article” so […]

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