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B2B Lead Generation Articles on b2b sales
- Does Sales Value Lead Scoring?
Marketo | Nov 12, 2010 | Permalink
I’m pleased to share some smart advice from Kathryn Roy, Managing Partner at Precision Thinking, a consulting company that addresses three key areas for B2B sales & marketing teams — primary research, strategy, and sales enablement. She’s worked with some of the most successful B2B companies including IBM, Avid, CA, Constant Contact, and Lotus, and [...]
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- What Does Your Funnel Look Like?
Marketing Interactions | Oct 21, 2010 | Permalink
Yesterday, I wrote about static value. Today, I'm writing about the need to revisit your idea of the pipeline funnel to see if it might have changed without you noticing. Focus.com - thanks to Craig Rosenberg and Sarah Miller - invited 14 Focus Experts to share their picture and definition of the B2B sales and marketing pipeline funnel. I was...
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- 9 Principles of Building a Sales Machine
Build A Sales Machine | Mar 02, 2010 | Permalink
I love getting and answering questions, as it helps shape my thoughts into useful forms to share. Here's a recent answer I posted on ExpertCEO (a private online community for CEOs), to a question that was along the lines of..."Do you have any advice for a company with a strong services practice that has sold mostly through partners in the past, but who is now looking to build their own Sales Machine? Any advice would much appreciated."That's a pretty broad question, so here's a broad answer. principles I feel would help anyone get going in the right direction:1) Be PATIENT. Developing a sales engine that predictably generates revenue can take 12-24+ months, depending on the state of your company. Even any one new program in b2b sales can take 3-6 months to be defined, show measure...
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- Marketo's Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing
Build A Sales Machine | Mar 02, 2010 | Permalink
(Want expert help - based off of salesforce.com's $1 billion best practices - in building your B2B Sales Machine? See Build Your Sales Machine)I'm a big fan of Marketo, mostly because of the people there like Jon Miller, Kelly Abner and now Maria Pergolino. Marketo's application and the team's knowledge and practical experience around demand generation and lead nurturing is A+!So when they shared their new "Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing" with me, I knew it'd be something worth sharing with you, dear readers :) Below is an excerpt from their post about it, and get the full post and guide here.And now...Marketo's Definitive Guide To Lead NurturingInformative and practical, The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing offers useful, qualitative insight from today’s marketing thought le...
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- Does Sales Value Lead Scoring?
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, to a question that was along the lines of...</span><span style='font-style: italic;'><br/><br/>"Do you have any advice for a company with a strong services practice that has sold mostly through partners in the past, but who is now looking to build their own Sales Machine? Any advice would much appreciated."</span><br/><br/>That's a pretty broad question, so here's a broad answer. principles I feel would help anyone get going in the right direction:<br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>1) Be PATIENT. </span>Developing a sales engine that predictably generates revenue can take 12-24+ months, depending on the state of your company. Even any one new program in b2b sales can take 3-6 months to be defined, show measured progress, and<span style='font-style: italic;'> become integrated & habitual (i.e. machine-like).</span><br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>2) Experiment</span>. With everything. Constantly.<br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>3) No one-offs! </span> (Unless it's an experiment to learn something for the future). It's not worth doing if it's not repeatable. One-off efforts, even for a quick payoff, are a distraction from focusing your energy on sustainable efforts.<br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>4) If it doesn't exist in your CRM system, it doesn't exist. </span> (Sales)people must be comp'd only off data in the CRM system. Reports must be run totally in salesforce.com/CRM, whenever possible. Etc.<span style='font-style: italic;'> [Update: thank you Ken Rudin of <span style='text-decoration: underline;'> </span><a href='http://www.lucidera.com/'/>for the comment below, I agree the data just needs to be in a system and accessible. I should have said here that reports must not be in Excel whenever possible!]</span><br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>5) Can you sketch out how things work on a flow chart? </span>Even simply, on paper or a whiteboard? If not, that's a problem. What's the desired outcome, and process that leads to that outcome? Is it being done ad-hoc today? Sketching it out is the first step to bringing some order to the process...and thus outcome.<br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>6) Focus on results rather than activity</span> (ex: number of qualified opportunities created per month is much more meaningful than number of sales calls made)<br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>7) Track fewer, more important metrics.</span> It's easy to go way overboard in building reports and dashboards. Work with your team to prioritize metrics. Think in handfuls, not dozens.<br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>8) Special attention on batons that cross functions. </span><span>Whenever a process crosses teams (marketing to sales, or sales to professional services, or...), a baton is passed, and you have all the ripest conditions for problems.<br/></span><span style='font-weight: bold;'><br/>9) Babysteps! </span><span>Consistently try lots of little improvements</span>. If you keep at them, they'll add up to big changes over time. (Remember the patience part?)<br/><br/><span style='font-weight: bold;'>Additional posts</span><br/>A few other blog posts that help illustrate the kind of thinking it takes to build a sales machine:<br/><ul><li><a href='http://www.buildasalesmachine.com/2007/01/joy-of-weekly-pipeline-metrics.html'>The Joy of Weekly Pipeline Metrics</a></li><li><a href='http://www.buildasalesmachine.com/2007/03/establishing-your-sales-waterfall.html'>Waterfall Metrics</a></li><li><a href='http://www.buildasalesmachine.com/2007/01/stop-measuring-calls-per-day.html'>Stop Measuring Calls Per Day</a></li><li><a href='http://www.buildasalesmachine.com/2008/09/problems-with-lumping-separate-four.html'>The Problems with "Lumping"; Separate the Four Core Sales Functions</a></li></ul><div class='blogger-post-footer'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/11038454-9125663142020992011?l=www.buildasalesmachine.com' height='1' alt='' width='1'/></div>)
