Big league pitcher Lefty Gomez is more famous for saying, “I’d rather be lucky than good”, than for the quality of his pitching. Unfortunately, many marketing and sales professionals have this same attitude. More than once, I have succumbed to the wish for more luck when in truth, it was something else I needed. A […]
Seven Strategies to Accelerate Revenue Growth In its most basic form, Sales Transformation is ensuring you have equipped your sales team with the best skills, tools and sales infrastructure to enable successful and profitable sales campaigns. According to Wikipedia, sales transformation is a form of change management—realigning how assets and people are used to restructure a […]
This blog originally appeared at tenfold.com. Effective selling isn’t about finding people who are interested, talking to them once or twice, and then closing the deal. It’s about building relationships with prospects. In fact, at least 80% of all sales require five or more follow-ups. Despite that, a typical salesperson only tries to reach out […]
The relationship between marketing and sales is so crucial to a company’s success yet it is often less than ideal. In my company, we get to work with a fair number of CMOs and CSOs and while they are usually great at their individual jobs, they need to work together well to drive the revenue […]
In my work with sales teams all over the world, I am often asked about what is the most critical trait for a successful salesperson. My answer is always the same: “Genuine curiosity.” Curiosity is like a Swiss Army knife with all the attachments. It gets the job done in nearly every situation and is […]
CEOs have likely already conferred with their leadership teams about how they will deliver sales- and marketing-fueled growth for this year and beyond. Yet while no successful leader submerges him or herself in the nuts and bolts, you must have a dashboard, even an informal one, for guiding your team, asking the right questions and […]
I just listened to an interesting podcast featuring my old colleague Heidi Melin. Heidi is CMO of Plex Systems and is a well-respected marketer. It was an interview-style podcast, hosted by Glenn Gow of Crimson Marketing. The topic of the podcast is How CMOs of High Growth Companies Can Achieve Rapid Scale. Naturally, as a […]
One of my favorite bloggers, Paul Castain, posted an excellent article titled The Patience/Urgency Conundrum in Sales on his Sales Playbook website. Using the “courtship” metaphor, Paul explains that sales relationships, just like romantic relationships, have a natural timing, and that it can sometimes be counterproductive to disrupt that timing by forcing the issue during […]
If you ask a dozen marketers and sales people for their definition of a qualified lead, you might hear answers ranging from “anyone that’s breathing” to “someone ready to buy today.” Obviously, there is a wide gulf between these two extremes, especially if the definitions come from people working at the same company. This issue […]