Geoffrey James just wrote an interesting post over at his Sales Machine BNET blog entitled: How Important is Sales Technology. Not Very. He wrote the thing to be edgy, but on the whole I just don’t agree with him. At any rate it warrants a discussion.
Geoffrey’s 4 main points were:
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Some light reading to catch up on over the weekend for those so inclined.
Is It Time For A New Compensation Model For Search And Digital Marketers?
Need to Justify Social Media? Use Real Numbers About Real Money
Why Groupon Is Poised For Collapse
Inside Sales Tip: 7 Slump-Busting Ways to Get Your Mojo Back
Why HubSpot Acquired Marketing Automation Company Performable
B2B Response Databases: Which is Best?
Getting Funded in a Frothy Market
The Blurry b2b Buying Process and the New Breed of b2b Buyer
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I speak with executive leaders all day long and sometimes I’m quite bewildered by the belief sets being operated on. I’ve made a list of these sales and marketing limiting beliefs over time and I’ve compiled the top 59 for your enjoyment here. Many of you are going to think these are obvious facts or truths. That is not the case in the executive leadership at more companies than you could ever imagine. If I had to SWAG it I’d say that 70% of all companies have this stuff ass backwards.
Alright, enough postulating, it’s time to let it rip baby.
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Is your company struggling to generate more high quality leads for your sales team? If you answered yes, you are not alone, in fact, you are in the majority of organizations that name their biggest marketing challenge as generating high quality leads for their sales team.
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I’m always down for a little bit of sales chart porn. Here is some great stuff from my friends over at The Bridge Group.
Source: The Bridge Group
What is the takeaway?
The traditional sales model of direct field sales reps is moving to more cost effective inside sales models. Just look at some of the growth numbers in any inside sales hiring study. The profession of inside sales is on the rise. Are you ready?
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I stumbled across this hilarious short video clip about two “sales guys” in the heat of a pitch. While it may be a bit over the top and from College Humor (you all know you wish you were back sometimes) I wonder how many of us make the mistake of talking too much about us, our company, our position in the marketplace, our solutions before really understanding the prospect’s business.
You are going to enjoy this one. The 5 hour energy shot spike and shades are priceless.
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Recently, Mike Damphousse, Trish Bertuzzi and I lead a Focus roundtable where we discussed lead generation tactics for inside sales. It was a fun, laid back discussion on some pretty hot topics within sales leadership circles.
Topics included:
1) The pros and cons of inbound and outbound lead gen tactics for inside sales teams
2) Best practices for tools and techniques
3) Setting an SLA between marketing, sales and the inside team
For the full audio of the Focus Roundtable please click here.
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I absolutely love the research the Altimeter Group cranks out on a weekly basis – it’s must read stuff if you want to understand what is coming down the pike. It’s a fun brainteaser to try and map evolving social trends back to B2B sales and marketing processes.
There’s a good deal of chatter on social selling and how buyer 2.0 is changing B2B sales organizations’ go to market strategy. Most of this conversation zips right to which magical Sales 2.0 technology to buy to help sales reps take advantage of relevant social media conversations and trigger events happening on the web.
IMHO that’s like asking a woman to marry you on the first date just because she is hot.
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Superb Slideshare deck from David Skok, partner at Matrix Partners. You can connect with David Skok on Twitter @bostonVC
For the sales process, sales strategy or sales leadership geeks out there this deck is gold.
I also love David’s blog For Entrepreneurs. It is one of the best resources on the web for learning how to build killer inside sales models and how to grow a successful startup company into a major player.
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Check out this fabulous Slideshare presentation by HubSpot on Marketing Transformation. I may work for HubSpot and some might call me biased, while that may be true, this is still one kick ass presentation.
Buying habits are changing. Marketing is changing. Sales is changing. Is your company changing?
For more on the Marketing Transformation movement join HubSpot for an eye-opening, week-long look at how search engines, social media, and mobile technology are transforming our lives—and how businesses like yours are embracing and utilizing these tools to transform costly, low-yield marketing programs into finely-tuned lead-generation machines.
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