The issue of minimal customer insight is problematic for both outbound cold calling and the telequalification of responders where limited profiling information exists. If you are in telesales, how can you be both buyer-centric AND productive? For telesales groups that target the SMB segment (Small, Medium Business), the dynamics are very different than in pursuing large mid-market or enterprise accounts. In targeting the vast SMB market through lead generation, the challenge for telesales is to break into large numbers of accounts without the luxury of referrals or deep account insight. MORE >>

Market Segmentation - An outbound marketing program can provide very actionable information for B2B marketers to segment their markets and generate higher yield programs. This information can be leveraged for trigger marketing and solution selling. In my last post on outbound marketing, I discussed the use of outbound marketing in targeting five types of buyers - buyers who can only be reached and persuaded to consider your solution through outbound marketing. Today I want to highlight (not hype) some of the key benefits uniquely associated with outbound marketing. MORE >>

The largest IT vendors are better managed and capitalized The Economist draws heavily from an OECD report and quotes from its author: More importantly, last time around the IT industry was not the victim of an economic crisis, but its cause, says Graham Vickery , author of the OECD report - Information Technology Outlook.the slowdown and declines so far are not as dramatic as the ICT crash in 2001-02 as the sector is markedly stronger and has not engaged in the excesses of the earlier period. Fasten your seat belts. We will be encountering turbulence. MORE >>

The list providers were requested to provide counts across a variety of industries and asked to match data to ten real-world contacts that shared their contact information. Sometimes one data provider can provide very accurate information at the account level but the number of contacts is sparse. At last year's MarketingProfs B2B Forum , I met Ruth Stevens , consultant, author, columnist, educator and B2B guru. Ruth was planning an analysis of online data providers and was considering some options for structuring the approach. Most of our clients are disappointed with this tactic. MORE >>

should be very appealing to you (as it is to the resource-constrained B2B marketer): free or nearly free applications, easy and fast to get up and running and rich with interactivity and online tracking information. However the records do not include contact information and the number of available contacts depends on the size of your network. With LinkedIn, you can inform your network of your job search status, ask questions of your network and the LinkedIn community and ask your network for introductions. Today's post is for the professional who is the program. MORE >>