The 2012 Customer Engagement Study , conducted by IDG Enterprise and released at the end of September, focused on learning more about the role content plays in an IT Decision Maker's buying process. validation for the role of content: Enterprise IT Decision Makers engage with an average of 10 content assets during their buying process. My money is betting on weighting more heavily the content buyers engage with before they fully engage in the buying process. Content is definitely driving a large portion of the IT buying process. Eight? " 2. MORE >>

 Sales Leadership: The Impact of a Creating a Sales Process  . Whether your organization is using CRM or not I find that most organizations have not taken the time to define, write out and train their sales team on how to use prescriptive a sales process.  Recently in working with a client we spent about two hours simply documenting what a salesperson should do on each of the various steps of their sales process, it enlightened the existing sales manager and created the beginning of a new sales driven culture for the company.  Why is this important enough to write about? MORE >>

Customers have long since established their needs and their journey through the buying process is essentially complete. In an effort to better position its reps ahead of RFPs and to make certain they are in a position of influence with customers, Microchip includes a demand creation stage at the beginning of their sales process. Microchip’s “Stage Zero” sales process not only supports and encourages demand shaping activity at scale, but it also provides reps with a simplified framework for shaping customer demand. But how? Microchip Technology, a U.S. MORE >>

Shifting your thinking from a selling process to a buying process means understanding how buyers buy and what stages each type of buyer goes through. When you have mapped out your buyer roles and the stages in their buying process, the next step is to determine what content is needed or available at each step in order to facilitate their buying process. On the second axis, list the stages of the buying process for your customers. Tags: lead nurturing Buying Process Buyer Roles Content Creating the matrix is relatively straightforward. MORE >>

Turning the sales process into a game is not a stretch of the imagination for companies. In may ways companies with B2B sales people have already added game mechanics into the process on a small scale. This is where most companies end the game process but that is about to change. True, the primary responsibility for sales teams is to close deals but within that process of selling there are a number of activities or tasks that can be measured and applied with game mechanics to drive even more productivity. What is Gamification? 65% of Xbox gamers are male. Spiffs. MORE >>