“You want to do WHAT ?” asked Nancy, CEO of StorTech, in disbelief. Jim, the VP of Marketing, quickly restated the request; “I want to use Self-Service Pricing as a way to capture better leads on our website.”. Nancy looked at Jim and smiled. Jim, we sell very complex and expensive products through many sales channels and partners. We never discuss pricing until we have a solid working relationship with the prospect. You know that.”. We can actually add more qualified opportunities to the top of the sales funnel with Self-Service Pricing. Here’s how it works….”. hope you enjoy it! MORE >>

It’s been an extremely hot summer here in Maryland with many days exceeding the 100 degree mark. While most people get excited talking about their vacation destinations, there is no rest for the folks that have to manage all that time off for large companies. They are the unsung heroes of summer. I’ve worked for large companies in the past, and I never realized the effort that goes into balancing associate time off with company objectives…until I talked with Terry Schilling at Tugboat Software. Labor Scheduling Software. The variables in Labor Scheduling are endless. MORE >>

While most B2B marketers are familiar with using white papers for lead generation, they may not have heard the term price paper ™ A price paper is a document that helps prospective customers with budgetary information about complex products and services. For the B2B marketer, it is a valuable document that prospects want and can be used as a strong offer to motivate them to provide their contact information (lead conversion). The above diagram shows two key ingredients for a strong B2B offer : Value and Scarcity. Value is the perceived value that a potential customer places on the offer. MORE >>

This is a guest post by Sam Reese, CEO of Miller-Heiman, The Sales Performance company. This post as well as other good sales performance insights can be found here. Has Your Growth Strategy Run Out of Steam? have been traveling quite a bit lately and I have not blogged for a little while. There is a ton of exciting activity going on out there to be sure, but companies are still cautious about projecting growth. Growth seems to be the hot topic everywhere right now. If we can help them then we will be in a great position. You can tell a lot about a company from the way they talk about growth. MORE >>

This is a guest article by Don Fornes , CEO of SoftwareAdvice.com. You can find the entire post here: Why Won’t Anyone Return My !*#@$% Call? Want to know why B2B sales is getting tougher? Hint - the customer doesn’t feel they need a Sales person as early in the sales cycle as they used to.) Don gives a great description of why sales people are getting pushed out of the sales loop by the self-service nature of the Internet. Of course, SoftwareAdvice and EchoQuote are poised to help Sales get back in the game , but that’s another discussion. Enjoy! It’s not just cold calling. MORE >>