What velocity do you need? And what does your current velocity tell you about what you should change?

How to size for sales success – know thy funnel

Most sales teams have an inherent awareness of how many customers they need to see in order to make a sale - in other words, the key ratios that affect their business. One business will tell you confidently that they win one sale from every four proposals. Another will say that it takes around three phone calls just to get a meeting. But how many drill back into their statistics to determine the total number of activity steps needed to achieve a result? And how many in this age of quarterly reports bother to work out the READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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How to use sales rep scorecards to drive sales performance

  Creating sales rep scorecards will help you improve sales performance by sending clear expectation signals, identifying coaching opportunities and inspiring healthy competition.  The single biggest reason you will lose top talent is poor management.  Assuming people are compensated competitively and other basic needs are looked after, if they are not clear about what’s expected of them or how their success is connected to the company’s progress, they will probably leave at the worst possible time. In the mid-2000′s, Jack Welch wrote about his ‘Rank and Yank’ performance management model where performance is assessed across the ’4-Es’ (Execution, READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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B2B lead generation: Why Sales and Marketing alignment produces better leads

The sales department wants the marketing department to provide more leads. But they want them to be "better qualified". The real question is, "qualified according to whom?" We all know the cliché that a suspect is not a prospect. If someone fills out a form at a trade show it doesn't mean they are interested in your products or services - just that they visited your stand or gave their contact details in order to pick up a trinket for the office. The big issue is that Sales and Marketing are not looking in the same direction. READ MORE ›

By |Tactics, Velocity|
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6 Key Skillsets B2B Marketing Managers Need in Their Team

With the shift to inbound or pull marketing well underway, there is also a shift in the marketing skillsets required to get the job done. B2B Marketing Managers are struggling to manage their team's skills transition. At the same time marketing agencies (a traditional source of specific skills) are also undergoing a massive change towards hybrid digital-centric agencies. The old days of $5k per month PR retainers are rapidly disappearing in favour of agencies who can provide services across the spectrum. (Marketing Services is no less immune to disintermediation than other sectors). So what is the laundry list of READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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New research shows 80% of Marketers have marketing analytics…and why this sucks!

jjkkAlmostAlmost 80% of Almost 80%Almost 80%Almost 80% of marketers have some form of marketing analytics. In fact, almost 40% claim to have vast or significant quantities of marketing data, according to MarketingSherpa in their publication, The 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmarking Report. But...and it's a huge but...only just over a third of marketers are able to use all this beautiful, juicy data to gain any insight into the effectiveness of their marketing and a further 46% of respondents claim they only get occasional insights from their marketing analytics. What a waste! This really sucks! Genuine insight into marketing READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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B2B Complex Sales: why sales people should NEVER demo their product

Have you ever been on the receiving end of a product demo that seems to go on interminably until you feel that you have lost the will to live? Ever felt that the sales person is simply lobbing feature after feature at you, desperately hoping that that at least one of them will be of interest? Ever believed that they aren’t going to let you out of the room (or off the call) until they have shown you absolutely everything? Well, you’re not alone. That’s exactly how most prospects that have been subjected to a classic “everything READ MORE ›

By |Sales, Tactics, Velocity|
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How measurement can align Marketing and Sales

According to our benchmark study of 1,400 businesses, one in three of them places alignment between the sales department and the marketing department as the No. 1 priority. Measurement makes a surprising contribution. The study, conducted by align.me in co-operation with United States-based online publishing company MarketingProfs.com, showed that those businesses which had achieved marketing-sales alignment were significantly more successful than their competitors. Those businesses with the greatest degree of alignment were: Growing 5.4 per cent faster than their less-aligned counterparts when compared with businesses within the same industry. Closing 38 per cent more proposals than non-aligned READ MORE ›

By |Velocity|
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In Funnel Management, your objectives should be new business, not revenue

For years, B2B Marketing has been goaled on soft measures like awareness and more-recently leads. While neither have a role in contemporary B2B funnel management, measuring Marketing on revenue isn't the answer either. This isn't my 'prettiest' video blog, but this story was bubbling away and after a lengthy flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Poznan, Poland and I just had to let it out as soon as I landed.     Your thoughts?  

By |Velocity|
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How to measure lead effectiveness

Some businesses change their tactics with the same amount of science as they used to choose them in the first place - none. Others get themselves into such a state about how to decide whether to change or not, that they analyse themselves to death. So what makes sense to measure - and why? The answers lie in the detail - but only a little way in. Measure interest: What percentage of those who you first invited to act, took the first step? This first step is a great indicator of whether the topic holds interest READ MORE ›

By |Tactics, Velocity|
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The real reason sales people struggle to close opportunities

  Alec Baldwin has got a lot to answer for. And, no, I’m not talking about his appearance in “Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat”. I am, of course referring to his role as Blake, the alpha dog motivational salesman in the film “Glengarry Glen Ross”. By the way, you can blame the IMDb website for the “alpha dog motivational salesperson” tag. It’s a laughable description. But it’s somewhat relevant, because the role he plays in that film is, by the standards of effective salesmanagership, completely barking. Blake’s Seven becomes 3 For those of you unfamiliar READ MORE ›

By |Sales, Velocity|
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