On-Hold Messages: Ditch the on-hold music and the typical sales pitch for something your customers, prospects, and partners will actually enjoy listening to. Customize the message for each department. Bonus points if you can actually get customers to ask to put them back on hold to finish listening to the message. In the B2B world this is a lost opportunity, because you could be sending quality content with your invoice (or on the invoice itself) that might get the customer’s attention and continue building trust. The Forgotten Content Channels. MORE >>

The Customer Buying Cycle Framework. If you missed the DemandCon Conference hosted earlier this month in San Francisco, the online recording of the sessions is worth checking out. BrightTalk did an excellent job with the recordings and is making all of them available for free on their website. There are over 20 presentations available, ranging from Social CRM and Lead Generation, to Case Studies and Sales Enablement. must-watch presentation, though, is the keynote address “ The State of Demand Creation “, by Tony Jaros , SVP Research for SiriusDecisions. MQL to SAL: 66%. MORE >>

When marketers understand sales, their work becomes more relevant to customers, and more persuasive. Many of us have seen the firm that delegates marketing to a customer service rep who took a few creative writing classes and uses Facebook a lot. And perhaps we’ve also run into the sales manager who checks in with his reps once a month and spends the rest of his time playing customer golf. This is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Internal struggles between sales and marketing are commonplace in organizations of all sizes. Here are a few thoughts on how to make it happen. MORE >>

If you have the standard flavor of Salesforce.com with no customizations or if you are a startup just beginning to make use of the CRM system, then integration won’t be a problem. For other companies where the CRM system has been extensively customized, or if you already had different ways (screens, triggers, etc.) Map out more complex nurturing flows based on different types of customers, products, and behaviors. But let’s say you got approval and have purchased the marketing automation software of your dreams. Now what? Getting Started with Marketing Automation. MORE >>

was curious to see how marketers of the past have used content marketing strategies to attract and engage customers before the Internet Age. A Content Marketing eBook. Content Marketing is all the rave, that’s part of what drove me to do some research on the history of content marketing and publish this free eBook, A Brief History of Content Marketing. The result was a fun project, and many findings. Who would have thought giving away free recipe books could save a company? Or that Microsoft (of all companies) was the first of Fortune 500 corporations to have a corporate blog? MORE >>