Don’t miss this opportunity to vote for your top five candidates to be among the fifty most influential people in sales lead management in 2009. Because the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) is closing the polls at Midnight Pacific Time (UTC-8) on Friday, November 13th. Then be sure to watch for the results on November 16, 2009. Tags: Sales lead generation Sales lead management sales lead management Both members and non-members can vote. promise to publish the list of winners right here, whether I make the cut or not. Thanks much! MORE >>

I've heard more B2B marketers citing LinkedIn as a key social network they want to add into their lead generation and marketing strategy. often get asked questions like "how do you generate leads via LinkedIn (without alienating your network)? "  In this post, " 5 steps for using LinkedIn as lead generation tool ," I share what I've learned so far. My colleagues over at MarketingSherpa just posted a terrific case study on Using LinkedIn for Lead Generation. Quality can be an issue with leads from LinkedIn. How are you doing it? MORE >>

5) Brand Promise/Reality Gap Reduction: The trend that social media kicked into high gear in 2009 will continue into 2010; any organization that has a significant gap between their brand promise, and their brand reality will have that gap mercilessly exposed through social media and community-created content. The gaps here will lead to a much broader discussion of what “brand” means to a B2B organization, that goes beyond logos, taglines, and colors. Tags: lead nurturing marketing automation marketing analysis Social media data management B2B Marketing Sort of. MORE >>

My checklist for optimizing the lead generation process so far has included six steps: the mindset of not pushing ; repairing the rift between sales and marketing ; creating the ideal customer profile (and the un-ideal customer profile as well); agreeing upon a universal lead definition that fits your company’s goals and culture; importance of a well maintained database ; and, in step 6, I outlined a multi-modal approach and discussed its importance in the lead gen process. Today I’d like to discuss the aspects of an effective lead management process. MORE >>

Other B2B companies try to skip the leads-to-salespeople-to-sales process, instead encouraging prospective customers to initiate purchases themselves from print or online catalogs and/or via order forms, e-commerce sites, phone calls or purchase orders. have been working hard, for at least a couple of years now, trying to use social media to measurably move the needle in regard to generating B2B sales leads and driving B2B sales. So I’ve also been searching for evidence of leads and sales from social marketing everywhere I can. about a survey they recently conducted. MORE >>