Sales Engine

MAY 24, 2016

In fact, when 418 executive buyers were surveyed by Forrester Research , they gave failing grades across the board for sales reps’ knowledge of their specific business, their role within it, and their unique business needs. At Sales Engine , we put that information into a playbook.

Conversion 136

Conversion Forrester Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 136

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 1, 2015

Content Marketing IS Marketing, and it’s now the main revenue function of your business. In a recent presentation we gave about what content marketing is and why it’s important, a company in attendance approached us afterwards and wanted to talk about how they could apply it in their business.

Content Marketing 120

Content Marketing Cold Calling Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Ranking 120

Sales Engine

JUNE 7, 2016

As you are reading/clicking/sharing/consuming, the organization that created the content is being cemented in your mind as one you like doing business with, because it satisfies your needs. The old sales axiom still applies today—we all do business with those we know, like and trust. You have engaged in a dialogue with a brand.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Content Demand Generation Agencies Barriers 120

Sales Engine

JUNE 2, 2016

So you need to be continually feeding your audience with content that speaks to the high probability pains that are not about you, but about the business problem. So if the core business problem is actually further up the funnel, how do you drive traffic to your site in the first place?

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Marketing & Strategy Paper Content 120

Sales Engine

NOVEMBER 12, 2015

We asked Jennifer Gluckow, owner of SalesInANewYorkMinute.com about how she trains salespeople to prospect for and acquire new business by blending the best of the old techniques we know and love, and how they can be incorporated into current tools, technologies and strategies. Bring someone who may give your customer business.

Cold Calling 120

Cold Calling Allocation Youtube Internet Marketing 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 21, 2016

“Sales has this tremendous exposure that are our readers, these business owners,” Wood explains. They know firsthand their struggles and what these people face every day, and they’re also the experts. They have the knowledge that we’re trying to portray in our content.”

Content 159

Content Internet Marketing Training Spending 159

Sales Engine

MAY 19, 2016

The necessity of lead intelligence It used to be that a good sales rep could walk in the door of the business, meet the prospect in a conference room, shake hands and see around the office. An experienced sales rep could read eye contact and body language and would pretty much know the challenges that the business faced.

Sales Qualified Leads 159

Sales Qualified Leads B2B Marketing Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy 159

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 5, 2016

Since it’s become more difficult for sales people to get in front of prospects, many B2B companies are relying heavily on content marketing to supply top-of-the-funnel leads that can be converted into closed business. But how do they know if those marketing efforts are having impact on the bottom line?

Marketing Qualified Leads 120

Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Ranking MQL Top of Funnel 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 5, 2016

Since it’s become more difficult for sales people to get in front of prospects, many B2B companies are relying heavily on content marketing to supply top-of-the-funnel leads that can be converted into closed business. But how do they know if those marketing efforts are having impact on the bottom line?

Marketing Qualified Leads 120

Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Ranking MQL Top of Funnel 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 22, 2016

How First Rate Uses Thought Leadership Content to Grow the Business Having the same brand since their start in 1991, First Rate knew they had to make some major changes if they were going to compete effectively and grow in today’s digital era. People outside of our organization don’t understand our business and the technology we have and use.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Demand Generation 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 22, 2016

How First Rate Uses Thought Leadership Content to Grow the Business Having the same brand since their start in 1991, First Rate knew they had to make some major changes if they were going to compete effectively and grow in today’s digital era. People outside of our organization don’t understand our business and the technology we have and use.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Demand Generation 120

Sales Engine

JULY 13, 2016

If you are familiar with the sales funnel, you are likely also familiar with the following: Your prospects’ expectations of you have changed, but your business leaders’ expectations haven’t. Meanwhile, your business leaders still expect you to increase sales. Prospects expect you to be a publisher , not a marketer.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Conversion Marketing Automation Services Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

JULY 13, 2016

If you are familiar with the sales funnel, you are likely also familiar with the following: Your prospects’ expectations of you have changed, but your business leaders’ expectations haven’t. Meanwhile, your business leaders still expect you to increase sales. Prospects expect you to be a publisher , not a marketer.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Conversion Marketing Automation Services Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 25, 2016

Let’s say for example that you sell enterprise software to businesses and because of the large investment, most companies stay with their current vendor least five years before making major changes. If you’re in the credit card business, what’s the old fashion way to be come a market leader? Or should I say, it’s potential buyers.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

JUNE 13, 2016

Unfortunately, businesses can’t become content marketers simply because they decide to do so. Business leaders must be convinced of the importance of content. It makes sense for such a major transition to feel uncomfortable—an overhaul to your strategy often involves an overhaul to (at least some of) the way in which you do business.

Allocation 120

Allocation Content Demand Generation Agencies Work Management 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

As Sanjay Dholakia, CMO at Marketo, says in that same webinar, marketing is "business to human" at the end of the day, and it's vital to keep in mind that people are people, "human beings whether they're buying pants, a car or software for their business."

Acquisitions 149

Acquisitions Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Automation Services 149

Sales Engine

AUGUST 24, 2015

They went to trade shows and gave away trinkets in exchange for business cards. On the buyer side, when a company was evaluating for a business commodity or a piece of software, they would talk to an analyst and find out who the top vendors were.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies RFP Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 18, 2016

During uncertain economic conditions, business leaders are often forced to shift budgets amongst growth centers in the business. They realized that this was not the market that was going to grow their business. But how do you know where to invest? Specifically, are dollars best spent on sales or marketing?

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Cost per Lead 120

Sales Engine

MAY 22, 2016

Since Consultative purchases of complex products require a keen eye to detect the softer, subtler differences between vendors, purchasers must rely on their subject matter experts and business owners to make the buying decisions. It is not uncommon for a corporation to invest up to $1Million to pursue a key piece of business.

Allocation 136

Allocation RFP Consulting Paid Search Agency 136

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 16, 2015

Magazine business models have always been about their database. The business model was really never about selling advertisements. The publishing mindset needs to be extended to your business development/inside sales team. Remember when we used to buy targeted sales lists from magazines? Go back and review point number 1.

Content Marketing 120

Content Marketing Lead Ranking Content Marketing & Strategy 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 11, 2017

When someone clicks on a link, downloads a white paper, or registers for a webinar, our business development rep (BDR) gets an email alert saying that one of their prospects is checking out an article. And, of those leads, how many were our business development team able to turn into appointments (SALs)?

Demand Generation Agencies 136

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Budget Programs Demand 136

Sales Engine

AUGUST 13, 2015

The series, which is hosted by TechnologyAdvice’s Josh Bland, explores a variety of business and technology landscapes through conversations with industry leaders. Spend your money upstream, right up the sales pipeline, generate demand, nurture business leads. They can't do it on their own.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Storytelling Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 28, 2016

From a content marketing standpoint, for our business (Conversion Sciences) we currently rely on little to no outbound marketing to drive demand. Of course, we all do content marketing to get business, but search engine ranking should really be the primary metric and this strategy actually hurt our rankings. That’s what got published.

Marketing & Strategy 120

Marketing & Strategy A/B testing Broadcasting Content 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

As Sanjay Dholakia, CMO at Marketo, says in that same webinar, marketing is "business to human" at the end of the day, and it's vital to keep in mind that people are people, "human beings whether they're buying pants, a car or software for their business."

Acquisitions 120

Acquisitions Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Automation Services 120

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 25, 2015

The new sales cycle seems to look more like that: There’s an original spark—a business problem that needs to be fixed. Six months later, the new leadership has the brilliant idea that this business problem needs fixing (and it’s the same one that was identified six months ago). Do you remember the children’s game Chutes and Ladders ?

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Thought Leadership Digital Marketing Funnels 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 27, 2015

So whether that’s a Business Development rep making a phone call and leaving a voicemail, or an automated email sent to them containing a link to another piece of content—it must help them along and provide value. You can, however, predict what topic they’re interested in based on the content they’ve already consumed.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads Buy 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 10, 2016

But an early stage buyer is trying to solve business problems, so whether you’ve gotten their attention with an email or they’ve found you through organic search , they are only interested only in solving their problem at hand.

B2B Thought Leadership 120

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Content B2B Sales 120

Sales Engine

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

But an early stage buyer is trying to solve business problems, so whether you’ve gotten their attention with an email or they’ve found you through organic search , they are only interested only in solving their problem at hand.

B2B Thought Leadership 120

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Content B2B Sales 120

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

They want for rich, meaningful content that helps them solve business problems. Search engines have a vested interest in helping you find exactly what you’re looking for—and people aren’t looking for sales pitches. I’ll assume that it’s the latter.)

SEO 120

SEO Content Keywords Opinions 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 2, 2015

For example, let’s say that the conversation started with a prospect searching Google about a business problem and found you through a white paper on your website. Furthermore, those conversations must continue before the prospect loses interest in you, or it will never turn into an opportunity. Not necessarily.

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Paper Fulfillment B2B Marketing 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 31, 2016

Sharma concludes that, “As businesses start producing more content than ever, it’s going to become important to find ways to get that content in front of the right people.

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Process B2B Marketing Automation Services 120

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 18, 2015

But the people that do come to that page are a pretty good indication that they are a prospect because they’re searching for exactly the business problem that you solve. And yes, I realize that I’m not going to have very many people on the planet searching for that exact 8-word keyword phrase every month.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel SEO Content Marketing Long Tail Marketing 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 28, 2016

To illustrate what I mean, let’s say that you sell an enterprise software solution to businesses. So if you’ve been producing content in the form of blogs, white papers, and infographics, it’s a fairly easy transition to take some cues from the basic structure of a business magazine.

Webinar Metrics 120

Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Content Paper 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 27, 2016

What are the business challenges that they face and are trying to solve? Prospects want to talk to someone that can solve business problems. A lot of our customers also experience that exact same business problem. Now you’ve created the opening for a salesperson to have a business conversation. They have pain.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Webinar Metrics Paid Search Agency Companies 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 20, 2016

If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because the underlying premise of content marketing is the same as sales prospecting—we do business with those we know, like, and trust. So from there, you should have a business development discussion to continue the conversation down the path until they're sales ready.

Lead Ranking 218

Lead Ranking Lead Gen Lead Scoring Marketing Qualified Leads 218

Sales Engine

AUGUST 23, 2016

In the middle, you staff and execute the show, collect business cards, and set up meetings. The new sales cycle looks more like that: There’s an original spark—a business problem that needs to be fixed. When it’s all over, you ship the booth and collateral boxes home and collect the leads for sales. And now there’s a budget cut.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Process B2B Thought Leadership Work Management 120

Sales Engine

MARCH 3, 2016

Staying on Top of Best Practices Spangler and his team stay on top of best practices in marketing not only by looking at what other industries are doing, but also by creating a feedback loop with the agents—the ones that are ultimately using the content to enhance their individual businesses.

Paid Search Agency 120

Paid Search Agency Content Marketing Storytelling Advertising Agencies 120