Like the unicorn , whose horn was said to cure illnesses and neutralize poison, the C-level executive is a mythical creature, though long hunted by IT sales rep looking for a cure to their late-quarter sales slump. That’s one reason only 15% of executives find sales calls useful and up to their expectations. Tailoring the sales pitch, and your marketing content, to the different flavors of C-level prospects takes time and effort. But, as Forrester Research points out in a recent report , “.no but no generic “C-level executive.”. Hoping to find the CFO? MORE >>

Some of the more forward-looking PR firms I work with are looking to supplement traditional PR offerings with demand generation services, using marketing automation software such as Marketo and HubSpot to track prospect’s actions to “nurture” them with additional content towards a sale. ve long had a gut feeling that this is a good way to go, and my belief has been confirmed my recent survey results cited by the DemandGen Report. They show that the use of marketing automation software is indeed taking off, but not as quickly as some had hoped. Except I just did. MORE >>

But is asking prospects to spend the time playing an online game good for all parts of the sales cycle? I have to give IBM points for even trying this: They’ve developed an online game that walks players through a (BPM) Business Process Management) exercise.   In Innov8 players are presented with multiple scenarios (tweaking a supply chain or improving customer service) and get to see how business process automation helps the business. OK, World of Warcraft it ain’t.   Maybe. couldn’t tell because the game crashed my browser, twice, before I could get to the real action. MORE >>

The bigger and more complex the sale (and thus the more interesting for my client) the more likely it is a consultant is involved, not merely as a reseller but as a provider of critical, industry-specific expertise. Journalism isn’t like marketing, and that isn’t just because journalists supposedly seek the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Reporters and editors take an extremely pragmatic, “whatever and whoever it takes” approach to getting good stories. That means choosing and quoting good sources based on their knowledge and credibility. MORE >>

And, as Forrester points out, you need to develop sales content geared to the needs of individual industries so buyers in each of them can understand why they should care about what you’re selling. Marketing Interaction suggests creating “content designed to answer specific questions buyers have at each stage of the buying process” and “create a conversational brief for sales that indicates which resources should be used when for specific buyer segments.” IT marketing IT sales and marketing Now, it’s official – or at least corroborated by a Forrester Research Inc. report. MORE >>