B2B Solutions and Services Archives

I’ll Pretend I’m Selling, If You Pretend You’re Buying

B2B Marketing and Sales, Buyer Engagement, Chief Revenue Officer, Revenue Growth, Sales Effectiveness, Sales Excellence

In my four decades in sales leadership at both large enterprises and early-stage growth companies, and in my subsequent consulting & sales advisory practice, I have witnessed and resolved many poor sales practices. If sales leaders do not diagnose and correct these Deadly Sins of Selling, then accelerated and predictable sales outcomes will be in jeopardy. I recount these sins with amusement since they also tell us something about human nature and how that factors into successful selling practices. Individual sellers, their sales managers, sales trainers, and sales coaches can all benefit from being on alert to these common sins.

April 15, 2024/0 Comments/by Sherwin Uretsky

Smart Rooms for Account-Based Sales

Account-Based Marketing, B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, CRM, Marketing Automation, Measurement and Analytics, Revenue Growth, Revenue Systems, Sales Enablement, Sales Excellence, Technology & Websites

The buy-sell process for B2B high consideration products and services is complex and highly collaborative involving team selling to committee buying. Virtual workspaces like Smart Rooms from Journey Sales facilitate this process by helping account teams share, collaborate and communicate with buying teams throughout dynamic sales and onboarding lifecycles.

Journey Sales built Smart Rooms natively on Salesforce® as digital workspaces that allow sales teams and service teams to quickly create personalized, guided digital experiences with their account buyers and track engagement along the way.

To optimize B2B sales, we often design funnels to drive out metrics and codify sales processes. Linear funnels for B2B are particularly relevant when purchasing is transactional or follows a highly predictable process. Yet, for complex B2B and high consideration sales, customers are interacting with a range of 3rd party research, journals and publications, as well as your competitor’s funnel. This is why we need a non-linear more collaborative approach to selling and engaging the client – one that allows us to build our value propositions responsively and engage customer teams over time. For these more complex sales and dynamic environments, a Smart Room is a great fit.

May 21, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Why You Need Fewer Leads…But More Marketing Qualified Leads

Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing

Why Marketing Qualified Leads?

Although many marketers focus on increasing the number of leads, quite often marketers should be in fact aiming to have fewer leads. The key is that this smaller number of leads are Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), who are genuine sales prospects, instead of people who are curious but have no intent to buy.

January 18, 2017/0 Comments/by John Stone

Align Marketing and Sales to End 2015 Strong

B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Architecture, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Revenue Programs, Revenue Strategy, Revenue Systems, Sales Excellence

It’s the middle of Q4 and the end of the year is fast-approaching. For many, it is a time to slow down from work and spend time with family. For sales people, it’s can be a frantic time, as many B2B companies must close sales opportunities to achieve revenue goals.

So, what can the marketing team do to help the sales team and ring in the New Year on a positive note? Here are a few tips to align marketing and sales and help ease the December frenzy and drive some upward momentum into the New Year.

November 6, 2015/0 Comments/by nhill

Complex Sales Campaign Design with Closed Loop Marketing

B2B Marketing and Sales, Closed-loop Marketing, Content Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Growth, Revenue Programs

Corporations with complex, high-consideration sales are often accused of focusing on the short-term, which is inevitably reflected in their demand generation or campaign strategy. This generally means that marketing and sales are not aligned and operating to some degree as silos. With short-term horizons, the campaign communications focus tends to be on sales driven, tactical programs designed to seek out “hot leads”.

In the highly competitive, complex B2B sales world with longer sales cycles, this is not fully sustainable. There is a typically a sales team or committees of savvy buyers. A short term focus may eke out some leads, but what about the other leads who may with some nurturing turn out to be qualified opportunities — but not yet “sales-ready.” The modern buyer knows your product or service from what is readily available on the web and related sources and will be considering any number of options before making a decision.

Studies show that 50% of leads are qualified but aren’t immediately ready to buy something from you [Source: Gleanster Research]. With lead nurturing however, you can bring those leads through your sales funnel and garner 4-10 times the response rate compared to a regular email blast while doing it [Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report].

So where do you start?

October 18, 2015/0 Comments/by Therese Byrne

B2B Marketing Statistics – And Some Perspecitve

B2B Marketing and Sales, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Growth

I received these statistics in a recent email and I thought they were worth sharing further with some comments. I am adding some implications as I see them below each one:

Eye-Opening A whopping 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel. (Source: MarketingSherpa)

Without a defined funnel, it is very difficult to develop a predictable forecasting capability.
Defining your funnel – with the buyer in mind – helps you develop the specific content you need to engage buyers at different stages.
In most of our B2B work we help define a collaborative qualification model between sales and marketing where sales teams have early insight into marketing leads. By taking a “decision support” approach, the organization is not leaving it up to marketing to determine the relative value of a lead – often the sales rep can help make the judgment supported by the behavioral data.

August 1, 2013/0 Comments/by John Stone

Earn Media in 2013 – 5 New Year Resolutions

B2B Marketing and Sales, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Social Media

Best Wishes for the New Year!

Consider adding these resolutions to YOUR list and increase your impact in 2013.

Deepen Your Relationships… Use social media and filtering tools to deepen 1:1 relationships, retain and grow contacts.
Earn Your Reach… In addition to paid media, differentiate with quality content to drive reach with earned media.
Hug Your Sales Team… Don’t let inbound marketing make you forget your valued selling professionals and partner channels.
Enhance Your Revenue Systems… Use best practices in media management, marketing automation, CRM, and social media
Innovate and Stand Out… Dust off that strategy and use design thinking to create innovative digital experiences.

Team Revenue Architects
revenuearchitects.com
877.REV.EARN

January 1, 2013/0 Comments/by John Stone

Lead Scoring in Act-On

B2B Marketing and Sales, Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Technology & Websites

By John Nielsen

Lead scoring is the process of evaluating and assigning points to prospects and leads using marketing automation tools. Points are distributed based on the attributes associated with a qualified lead. It is important to understand whom you are marketing to when managing a campaign, sending irrelevant content to your followers is a quick way to lose. To make sure this doesn’t happen to you, below are a few tips one can easily follow to update your contact lists and help identify priority focus using lead scoring.

October 16, 2012/0 Comments/by John Nielsen

Posts

I’ll Pretend I’m Selling, If You Pretend You’re Buying

Smart Rooms for Account-Based Sales

Why You Need Fewer Leads…But More Marketing Qualified Leads

Why Marketing Qualified Leads?

Align Marketing and Sales to End 2015 Strong

Complex Sales Campaign Design with Closed Loop Marketing

B2B Marketing Statistics – And Some Perspecitve

Lead Scoring in Act-On

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