Unfortunately, too many sales people use this same approach when working the show floor. As I said, there is a lot about them to love, but there’s also some work to do to eliminate the things many of us hate. I have a confession to make. I have a love/hate relationship with marketing events, a fair share of which I attend each year.   At many of these events, I have the good fortune of being able to present on topics such as lead management, lead nurturing and sales-marketing alignment. Along the way, I meet some very smart, interesting marketing people.  We just have to!”  MORE >>

These two groups must work together to define, agree to and implement the process. Lead management continues to be a hot topic in the world of B2B marketing as we turn the corner and head into the second half of 2010.  Over the last 12 months, marketing and sales dialogue increasingly has focused on how marketers can better engage with the more empowered B2B buyer and what they need to do in order to leverage the B2B buyer relationship. As a leader in lead management process development, our firm has seen a lot of confusion in the market about what constitutes lead management.  Metrics. MORE >>

We had a sales prospect, now a customer, that we had been working with and we had identified two main personas, the main influencer and the decision maker. While it takes more work up front, the results will be transformational and improve overall results. A few weeks ago I was leading a workshop on Lead Nurturing, which included the concept of buyer personas and defining the buying path for each individual persona. One attendee asked, “Why would you need separate buying journeys? Don’t you need to define one buyer’s journey for the persona and just align the content to that?”  MORE >>

From there, both sales and marketing have a single set of data to work from and for marketing this provides the ability to actually prove their pipeline contribution. We recently had the chance to catch-up with Jill Rowley a.k.a the Eloqueen to discuss various topics about our B2B world and marketing automation.  As one of the leading sales representatives in the marketing automation space, Jill has established herself as a thought leader and advisor to some of the worlds largest companies.  We would like to thank her for taking the time to talk with us. or maybe, “Why Eloqua?” MORE >>

Creating your case will take some work and time, but it’s well worth it.   The key is working backwards from the main objectives that are held dear to the executive team. How do you know it will work?”. A few weeks ago, I spoke with a marketing manager who was very excited about his plans to implement a lead management process and an enabling marketing automation (MA) solution at his company.  We met, devised a plan and agreed to a timeline to begin the engagement.  Two weeks later I received a phone call from him telling me his plans needed to be put on hold. The reason?  MORE >>