What challenges do inside sales professionals face each day as they battle voice mail/email to reach potential customers and make their number(s)? personally field a half dozen cold calls per day from companies I’ve never heard of. In this day and age of self-service information, why are inside sales reps fighting so hard to reach cold fish like me when warm, interested prospects are right under marketing’s nose visiting their corporate website? On February 10, 2011 I hope to find out…and change some minds. It’s true Marketing/Sales alignment. hope to see you there! MORE >>

It seems almost daily that I have a conversation with technology marketers about whether or not they should publish pricing on their websites. I’m an opponent of publishing pricing for one simple reason; it will lose you website conversions. Here’s why… Say you are researching IT storage arrays and are familiar with the leading mid-tier players like Coraid, EqualLogic, Lefthand, Nexsan, etc. As you visit each vendor’s website you know there is much more information available in various forms than you could possibly review. You move on. MORE >>

I attended a fantastic Focus.com presentation on June 29, 2010 as part of Focus’ interactive summit “ Mastering Lead Management “ For those of you who might have missed it, it is worth checking out. One of the presenters was Ardath Albee who continues to create value for her followers (I’m one of them) and clients by generating great content, non-stop. She is obviously a deep thinker about all things marketing and one of her slides stopped me in my tracks. The dark blue dashed line indicates how far Marketing has moved down the buying funnel time-line. Here’s why. MORE >>

Have you ever had a person fill out a contact form on your B2B site and put in the comments “DO NOT CALL ME!&# ? We periodically review EchoQuote requests for our newer clients and we sometimes get these. But why so angry ? think web users are finally sick and tired of sneaky ways being used to get their information so a sales person can “help&# them. Guess what? They don’t need help or at least not the kind you’re offering. Here’s a sequence that works for our clients: A quote is requested from their website via EchoQuote. By the way, feel free to call me :). MORE >>

I just finished a short paper on how B2B marketing has put itself in the position of being responsible for just about everything marketing and sales related. Here is an excerpt from: “How B2B Marketing Became Responsible for EVERYTHING (and how to reverse it)&#. “B2B Marketers are killing themselves trying to make everyone happy. The CEO needs revenue. The sales team needs qualified leads. The customers need information. Everyone is looking at marketing to make it happen. So, how did B2B Marketing become responsible for EVERYTHING? Was it self-inflicted or driven by outside forces? MORE >>