In B2B, Salespeople usually have to generate 75% of their own leads, and they have to prosecute all of them. Who are your salespeople and how will you manage them?

Your channel partner strategy plan begins with ‘who’

Your channel partner strategy plan needs to begin with "who"? But like so much of strategy, the "who" question isn't "who should my channel be?", but "who is my buyer?", and therefore "what sort of channel do my buyers need?" We're arguing here that your channel partner strategy plan needs to be based on what your buyers need, not on what you need. What type of channel your buyers need, and how many channel sales people you need to provide to meet that need, changes as the market matures. We'll show you how to work out your channel READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales|
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Eight tactics to improve conversion and dominate your market

If you can't make your funnel flow faster, can you lose fewer buyers throughout their journey? We've argued on recent blogs why you can't speed up your buyer just because you have quotas to meet, but that you can improve your conversion rates. We had a ton of email requests for specific tactics. So this week we're making a series of specific tactical recommendations to improve your conversion rates throughout the funnel. Want to receive more blogs like this? Subscribe to our twice weekly B2B marketing insights! Get your copy of our 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment Report

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales, Tactics|
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How to calculate your sales conversion rate (II), and why speed kills

In last week's show, we offered 10 steps for calculating sales conversion rate. We also promised to show you why lag is death. In English, why a buyer who has taken longer than normal is unlikely to buy from you at all. So does that mean there is merit in using assertive marketing and sales techniques to speed them up? We all want to speed our funnel up. In a recession like the GFC, sales cycles typically blow out, meaning buyers are taking longer than normal to buy. This could be so - they might genuinely be READ MORE ›

By |Evergreen, Sales|
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Calculate your sales conversion rate in 10 steps, and discover why lag is death

  Ask any Sales Manager, and she will tell you that her team closes 1 in 4 (or 3 or 10, whatever it is, they usually know the number). Ask a marketer what his click through rates on emails are, and again, he will know (maybe 4-5% of successful sends). But ask them how many names they need to add to their 'engine' next month, and how many deals need to close that month, and you'll probably get a "good question" response. Ask them to give you conversion rate by stage in funnel, and they'll blink and READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales, Velocity|
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Step up your lead generation game with these 5 tips

  As we all know, your website is your shop window. In this day and age your website’s look and feel along with its functionality can really turn your customers on or off, there is hardly anything worse than a dated website that gives you a sense of the early 2000s. Nostalgia is a no-go when it comes to your inbound marketing and B2B lead generation. Your website is the tool which lets you attract, engage, convert, close and delight. Obviously, the conversion part is fundamental to this process, but how do you get there? The answer READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales, Strategy, Tactics|
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Are your sales people merely communicating value – or creating it?

One of the problems with creating generic “unique value propositions” is that they are just that - generic. They might be a useful basis for communicating mass-marketing messages, but they are not a suitable basis for a truly productive sales conversation. To be truly effective - and to have real impact - your sales people need to be crafting uniquely customised value propositions for each individual prospect (and often each significant stakeholder). If that sounds like hard work, it is. But here’s why it is worth it… Your prospects are tired of generic value propositions that do READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales, Strategy, Tactics|
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B2B Marketing Definition

  I've not typically been big on the necessity for definitions, but became frustrated recently when a senior marekter threw terms like strategy, tactics around as if they were interchangable. It is not hard to understand what B2B marketing is, nor how it is different from consumer, or B2C marketing. Let's start at the top: B2B marketing can be defined as the planning, execution and measurement of the strategy and the tactics needed to sell a product or service to a business. In this blog, I'll unpack that just a little, argue why the four P's is READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales, Tactics|
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Why Marketing should report to Sales

  Want to receive more blogs like this? Subscribe to our twice weekly B2B marketing insights! Get your copy of our 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment Report Marketing needs to report to Sales. I'll get to that blasphemy in a minute. If you have listened to some of my recent blogs, you know that in 2005 we published the first of our landmark reports into alignment. What we learned then has shaped much of the debate on the topic of alignment ever since. In 2014 we published the 2013 refresh of the landmark alignment research. What we learned about READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales|
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B2B buyer behaviour

  Want to receive more blogs like this? Subscribe to our twice weekly B2B marketing insights! Get your copy of our 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment Report   I can show you how to almost double your closure rates from marketing leads with just 5 minutes work. I'll defend that outlandish statement in a minute or two. If you have listened to some of my recent blogs, you know that in 2005 we published the first of our landmark reports into alignment. What we learned then has shaped much of the debate on the topic of alignment ever since. READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales|
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Who should own Go-to-Market planning?

  Get your free copy of the 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment Report!   Riddle me this. What can lift the probability of Sales accepting Marketing’s leads by 31%, increase the probability of closing these marketing qualified leads by 56%, and increase Marketing’s contribution to revenue by 62%? Planning. More specifically, assigning the right owner to planning. To accelerate your growth, it’s as simple as that. In this week’s blog, Hugh reveals some of the cutting-edge insights from the 2014 Sales and Marketing Alignment report. He delves into who should own planning in your organisation, and backs READ MORE ›

By |B2B marketing blog, Sales|
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