This honor is recognition of the increasing importance of quality business data in driving lead generation and boosting sales productivity.”. A quick timeout to send our kudos to Sam Zales, president of ZoomInfo, who has been recognized by BtoB Magazine as one of the top 100 industry leaders in its annual “ Who’s Who in B-to-B &# special report. It’s the second year in a row that Zales has gotten the nod for BtoB ’s “Who’s Who in B-to-B.”. It is an honor to be recognized by BtoB as an influential thought leader,” said Zales, who took charge of ZoomInfo in the summer of 2009. MORE >>

ZoomInfo: Once sellers do get an opportunity with a C-level buyer, why do they tend to ‘show up and throw up’ and bombard the buyer with information about products and services? And when sales reps do get that meeting there is a tendency for non-senior salespeople to feel compelled to explain the worthiness of their products and how great their company is. Everyone wants to keep their job and a lot of products are bought so buyers can keep their jobs and stay mentally prepared for the future. Q&A | Steve Martin. Martin: There are two strategies. Subscribe to RSS. MORE >>

HiveFire, which was founded in 2007, is betting that its new product will help take b-to-b content management to a new level. The skill sets for b-to-b sales and marketing executives are changing at a rapid clip, as inbound marketing has started to gain on outbound marketing, or traditional methods of generating lead-gen revenue such as cold calling and face-to-face meetings. One of the key changes is what is being referred to in business precincts as the “marketer-as-publisher model.&# According to a recent report by ContentWise, companies spent a $47.2 Subscribe to RSS. MORE >>

Social media is really changing the way we sell and market,” said Shih, who was formerly a top executive at Salesforce.com and author of  “ The Facebook Era : Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff.&# “Look at how people are sharing more information about themselves than they ever have in history, so through LinkedIn profiles, through ‘tweets,’ our customers and prospects are revealing a tremendous amount of information.”. BtoB Roundtable Discussion: Switching Marketing From Mono To Surround Sound. Subscribe to RSS. MORE >>

At one session at the meeting Peter Burris, Principal Analyst and Research Director for Forrester’s Technology Marketing Research Team, contrasted the old model of engagement, in which market interactions were based on products and extending offers and waiting for prospects to respond, to the new paradigm, in which interactions are “based on business outcomes” and matching solutions to the needs of the buyer to effectively engage, according to DemandGen Report. The data was presented last week at the MarketingPros Business to Business Forum in Boston. Subscribe to RSS. MORE >>