I just got back from this year’s round of MarketingSherpa B2B Summits in Boston and San Francisco, where I provided one-on-one coaching to attendees, marketers from Fortune 500 organizations, leading private companies, and emerging businesses. (You can read more about who attended here.) Frankly, I don’t know who walks away more enlightened – the marketers […]
Continue readingFor most of us, the phrase “demand generation” conjures up things like campaigns, trade shows, and the corporate website. But what about sales prospecting? Despite all the newfangled marketing automation tools, most CEOs increase the funding for demand generation by authorizing the expansion of the sales organization. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Books like SNAP Selling, […]
Continue readingBrian Carroll was interviewed by Phil Dobbie, BNET and CBS News. Brian reveals how to execute the kind of engaging lead-nurturing conversations that result in more and better-selling opportunities. Listen here, or review key points by following these timestamps: -21:20 How can salespeople strike the perfect balance between nurturing existing leads and getting more sales […]
Continue readingFunnels are like the central nervous system of the best sales organizations. Few marketing departments depend on funnels to run their business the way sales leaders do. Yes, messaging, segmentation, branding, and numerous other considerations are extremely important. But no tool can impact financial performance for marketing as much as a funnel. There are four […]
Continue readingWhen 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.
Continue readingBe honest. How does your sales team perceive the leads Marketing produces? They love them – couldn’t be happier! They complain about lead quality. They complain about lead volume. The say leads, what leads? Marketing gives us leads? If you chose answer number #1, the first thing I would say is, “Well done.” The second thing […]
Continue readingLearn the 5 of the biggest dials and levers you can use to tune in and turn up your lead generation ROI along with additional resources
Continue readingAsk most executives and marketers what salespeople need to sell in this economy and they will say, “more leads.” So their marketing and lead generation focuses on getting MORE leads to their sales team. But do you know how many of your leads are actually impacting the sales pipeline? We’ve done numerous lead qualification programs […]
Continue readingI don’t know about you but I seldom meet a B2B marketer who has time to think. And it seems that the pressure keeps building as more of us seek to do more with less. That said, it’s vital for us to think before we execute. It’s not about doing more campaign activity… it’s about […]
Continue readingIt’s been well documented that the quality of collaboration between sales and marketing directly impacts ROI. The challenge that many organizations face is that their sales process is a black box. No one except the sales team knows what is going on inside the black box until a proposal or sale happens. Worse still, 80% […]
Continue readingThe huddle is crucial to the success of a team in most team sports. While in the huddle, the team looks at their performance on the last play, including what worked and what didn’t, and then uses this feedback to decide their next play. Sales and marketing can learn a lot from the team huddle. […]
Continue readingMany things with lead generation seem easier than they are. Take sales lead follow-up for example, research shows that sales people do not fully pursue around 70% of leads generated by marketing. That amounts to literally billions of wasted marketing dollars. The speed of lead follow-up is a major contributor to this problem. KnowledgeStorm and […]
Continue readingI just got back from speaking at today’s Minnesota Technology Forum where one of the other speakers was from 3M. They are one of the world’s major adopters and proponents of Six Sigma. The question that changed everything The speaker shared how Six Sigma helped 3M improve their sales team’s effectiveness by increasing the quality […]
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