Whether you work for a bank, insurance company or in the investment sector, you’re challenged to have a better and more complete understanding of your customers than in most other sectors. For many financial services firms, this still needs work.  You need to understand the barriers they are finding as they try to do business with you – not so you can take something away from consumers, but so that you can give people a range of relevant choices.  The above analytical areas are now table stakes in marketing best practices in your industry. MORE >>

You log in to your analytics program and poke around. If you're stuck with "data, data everywhere" and not a drop to act upon, it might be because your analytics program doesn't fit well with your business model. It's not that there's a right or a wrong type of analytics, but every company is different. To figure out what type of analytics you need , it's best to go back to the start and think about what makes your company unique, then find an analytics tool that matches those needs. How long does it take to implement this analytics tool? Been there? MORE >>

Add virtual work patterns, mobile workforce, different time zones, multiple language barriers to this mix, and you have individuals and departments operating in silos. Marketing automation systems can bridge the gap when it comes to sharing data and analytics between marketing and sales. Effective knowledge sharing can happen only when this feedback loop works like a well-oiled machine. Marketing and sales can no longer work in silos. Recently, I stumbled upon an interesting whitepaper series , authored by Dr. Andrew McAfee, a renowned Enterprise 2.0 champion. MORE >>

The single buyer model had worked well right up to the advent of the Internet and email.   That’s when the barriers started falling down like the Berlin Wall at the end of the cold war.  Sales training was all geared to train sellers how to persuade the single buyer and in the 1980’s we started to see models of how to determine the psyche of the single buyer – was he or she an amiable or an analytical? as examples, have completely erased the barrier to information and allow buyer networks to operate as one and to weigh-in on purchase decisions. How Did We Get Here? MORE >>

In a valiant effort to roll with the punches, marketing leaders are breaking down the barriers of responsibility and tackle these various challenges head-on, often without the necessary support of devoted teams or budgets. Big Data - “Educate yourself in marketing analytics, cloud computing, and big data.” To meet the demands of sales quotas influencing the organization, it’s critical to work more collaboratively with customer facing teams on account planning and opportunistic activities. Connecting sales channel silos - “Build stronger bridges with every sales channel.” MORE >>