Hugh Macfarlane, Founder & CEO of align.me, writes…
Donna J Kent, SVP of Global Sales, Marketing and Services at Televerde, sees the top of the sales funnel as a key performance indicator. As a practitioner, Donna has some key insights into new-customer experience. So what techniques should you use to optimise your marketing-contact database and digital marketing approach? What kind of dialogue and telecommunications practices actually work?
Donna’s presentation ‘Top of the Funnel’ is valuable because deals aren’t won or lost once the proposal is on the table, but way earlier – at the top of the sales funnel. Sales and Marketing professionals need to generate leads with the right buyers who have been conditioned to a concept you can win with, not a concept that helps your competitors.
Traditional business-to-business sales and b2b marketing is often characterised by ‘names’ that marketers call ‘leads’ (they are not) and Sales holding relationship meetings hoping they will move these buyers forward (they don’t). On the other hand, pin-pointing an accurate target with advanced white spacing makes for quality lead generation. Combine this with personalised dialogues enabled by the latest sales-efficiency technologies and supported by digital marketing, and you’ve got yourself a healthy Funnel.
The tactics needed to create these qualified leads will come from this and other presentations throughout the conference, and Chuck Besondy and I will be tying them together into a coherent whole in our B2B Marketing Training Workshop.
Haven’t yet registered for the B2B Marketing Training Workshop? You can do so (and get a 15% discount!) by scrolling to the bottom of our DemandCon event information page.
