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

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Marketing automation should deliver content that speaks to your prospect like a person—rather than a machine. Your CRM Should Start Giving You an Indication Customer relationship management (CRM) software such as Salesforce consolidates all customer information into one database, from personal data to purchase history.

Acquisitions 149

Acquisitions Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Automation Services 149

Sales Engine

JULY 7, 2016

In the not-so-distant past, scaling a B2B company meant hiring more sales people that were responsible for all their own business development. For example, if you had one sales rep carrying a $1 Million quota, and it cost $200K in salary and commissions for that resource, adding an additional sales rep could double the business.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Lead Ranking Paid Search Agency Content Marketing 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

JUNE 20, 2016

Most marketing and sales leaders in the business-to-business world know that nurturing leads is essential to maintain a digital connection with buyers who want to learn about a business pain, product, or service—but who are not yet interested in talking to a sales person.

Lead Ranking 174

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Lead Nurturing Lead Scoring 174

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?

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads 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?

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads MQL Top of Funnel 120

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. Rafferty: Storytelling is critical.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Storytelling Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

FEBRUARY 25, 2016

Marketing automation should deliver content that speaks to your prospect like a person—rather than a machine. Your CRM Should Start Giving You an Indication Customer relationship management (CRM) software such as Salesforce consolidates all customer information into one database, from personal data to purchase history.

Acquisitions 120

Acquisitions Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Automation Services 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 10, 2016

Outsourcing to a writer hasn’t been a great option either because even though at first it seems like an inexpensive alternative, it becomes cost-prohibitive when you consider all the time and effort to educate that person on your product and industry.

B2B Thought Leadership 120

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Content B2B Sales 120

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

NOVEMBER 30, 2015

Outsourcing to a writer hasn’t been a great option either because even though at first it seems like an inexpensive alternative, it becomes cost-prohibitive when you consider all the time and effort to educate that person on your product and industry.

B2B Thought Leadership 120

B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Content B2B Sales 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 2, 2015

Marketing must create content with the intent of replicating the process of one-to-one conversations with prospects that salespeople used to have (in person, on the phone, through referrals, etc), but now in a digital environment. The conversations you’re having with prospects now—both digitally and in person—will drive 2016 revenue.

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Paper Fulfillment B2B Marketing 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

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. Something that leverages real-time analytics and insights to personalize and automate that customer experience. If you do this right, the sales will be inbound.

B2B Sales 120

B2B Sales Process B2B 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 Demand Generation Agencies 120

Sales Engine

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

They want for rich, meaningful content that helps them solve business problems. And someone is going to comment on the person that disagreed with that comment and offer their opinion, and so on. Search engines have a vested interest in helping you find exactly what you’re looking for—and people aren’t looking for sales pitches.

SEO 120

SEO Content Keywords Opinions 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

MARCH 28, 2016

Demand generation requires a complete marketing program that not only attracts prospects to your website, but also converts them into leads, nurtures them over time through their own buying journey, and assists the consultative sales person to close. It’s a broadcast medium and especially useful if you are selling to business people.

Marketing & Strategy 120

Marketing & Strategy A/B testing Broadcasting Content 120

Sales Engine

MAY 5, 2016

Content for Lead Generation Should Focus on Business Problems, Not Solutions. It’s about identifying business problems that generate interest. All you want to do at this stage is capture their interest, nurture them with more content until they are sales ready, and then pass it to a sales person.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel B2B Thought Leadership B2B Business 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 7, 2016

To marketing, though, that person looks good enough on paper (or rather, in the CRM) to be designated “marketing-qualified” and handed off to the sales team for follow-up. That marketing qualified lead, the person who has downloaded the white paper, is a great lead, and we shouldn’t pretend that it isn’t.

Lead Ranking 136

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads Sales Qualified Leads MQL 136

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 Leads 218

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 6, 2016

But it’s not as simple as hiring one key person; it’s very rare for all of the necessary skills to exist in one person, or even several people. You need someone to nurture them, provide more information, and be a resource (business development, inside sales, etc.) We don’t know. until they’re ready to engage with a salesperson.

Demand Generation Agencies 168

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Paid Search Agency Demand 168

Sales Engine

JANUARY 12, 2016

Sreenivasan leads their content marketing arm like it’s a full-blown media company, running a 70-person “newsroom” that focuses on topics he loves: digital, web, social, mobile, video, apps, data, geolocation, email, and more. “I What I’ve learned in my two-year tenure at the Met is that the lessons we’ve learned here apply to every business.

B2B Marketing 120

B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency B2B Storytelling 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 12, 2016

Sreenivasan leads their content marketing arm like it’s a full-blown media company, running a 70-person “newsroom” that focuses on topics he loves: digital, web, social, mobile, video, apps, data, geolocation, email, and more. “I What I’ve learned in my two-year tenure at the Met is that the lessons we’ve learned here apply to every business.

B2B Marketing 120

B2B Marketing Paid Search Agency B2B Storytelling 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 23, 2016

In the middle, you staff and execute the show, collect business cards, and set up meetings. Intuitively, you probably know this, but because people are doing their own research about products and solutions to their problems, they don’t have to talk to sales person until they are ready to engage. And now there’s a budget cut.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Process B2B Thought Leadership Work Management 120

Sales Engine

JANUARY 28, 2016

To illustrate what I mean, let’s say that you sell an enterprise software solution to businesses. You have to build your audience one person at a time, and you keep them one person at a time. AMEX developed a media property called Open Forum , which is a CEO Boot Camp designed to help business owners.

Webinar Metrics 120

Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Content Paper 120

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 8, 2015

In the middle, you staff and execute the show, collect business cards, and set up meetings. Intuitively, you probably know this, but because people are doing their own research about products and solutions to their problems, they don’t have to talk to sales person until they are ready to engage. And now there’s a budget cut.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Process B2B Thought Leadership Work Management 120

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 16, 2015

And, most important, that person (or team of people) cannot be pulled in different directions as fire drills occur—they need to ensure that content gets developed and distributed on a regular basis. For example, let’s say that someone downloaded an infographic, and a business development rep calls them and sets an appointment to talk further.

Advertising Agencies 120

Advertising Agencies Budget Programs High Quality Lead Content 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 12, 2016

And the result may be that we need fewer sales reps, meaning we have to focus on hiring the really qualified, well-trained, consultative sales person that truly helps prospects diagnose their real problems. So what do they do? They end up buying a piece of software that they think will solve their problems, but it doesn’t.

Top of Funnel 136

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Cold Calling Sales Qualified Leads 136

Sales Engine

OCTOBER 1, 2015

For B2C companies, if someone types in something like “buy goPro Camera” as a marketer, I really don’t need to know much about that person, if anything. B2B sales cycles are a much more complex business problem to solve as they are exacerbated by geography, industry, and so on.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Sales Qualified Leads B2B Marketing Marketing Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

AUGUST 19, 2015

The issue is further highlighted in a March 2015 article by Shaish Chitnis called “The MQL is Dead" where he calls for different sales-defined metrics and the use of business development to qualify and nurture MQLs to turn them into Sales Accepted Leads (SALs). It’s really that simple—but then again, it’s not.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Marketing Qualified Leads MQL Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

DECEMBER 7, 2015

And the result may be that we need fewer sales reps, meaning we have to focus on hiring the really qualified, well-trained, consultative sales person that truly helps prospects diagnose their real problems. So what do they do? They end up buying a piece of software that they think will solve their problems, but it doesn’t.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Cold Calling Sales Qualified Leads 120

Sales Engine

APRIL 13, 2016

Just because B2B companies are investing heavily in content marketing doesn’t mean that they’re successful at generating the leads they need for business growth. You must c onvert this anonymous audience into known prospects for sales reps to have meaningful, consultative business conversations.

Top of Funnel 136

Top of Funnel Content Marketing Lead Ranking Digital Marketing Funnels 136

Sales Engine

JULY 21, 2016

Instead, this is great place for an asset like a white paper where you’ve documented a much deeper analysis on this business problem in which you begin exploring the solutions to those problems. Another mistake I see companies make is to put a form in front of their sales collateral such as a case study or a products brochure.

Lead Generation 120

Lead Generation Top of Funnel Generation Ad Building 120

Sales Engine

JULY 21, 2016

Instead, this is great place for an asset like a white paper where you’ve documented a much deeper analysis on this business problem in which you begin exploring the solutions to those problems. Another mistake I see companies make is to put a form in front of their sales collateral such as a case study or a products brochure.

Lead Generation 120

Lead Generation Top of Funnel Generation Ad Building 120

Sales Engine

MAY 12, 2016

If this sounds familiar to the process that a consultative sales person uses to get in front of prospects, you’re right— the process is the same. People still do business with those they know, like and trust. It’s only the tools and techniques that have changed to help replicate these conversations digitally.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Branding Brand Identity Budget Programs 120