Insights for Sales »
 

New! Sales Department Accountability
By Geoff Rego, CEO, Market2Lead, Inc.
This white paper will help you increase lead-to-sales ratios by improving integration between your marketing and sales teams.

New! Which CRM Is Right For You?
By Oracle Corporation
Companies of all types and sizes have leveraged CRM to dramatically improve sales, marketing, and service. Yet a major decision underlies the CRM selection process, and that is whether to choose an on-premise application or an on-demand service.

Who Wants to Go First? Order Effects Within a Series of Competitive Sales Presentations
By Judy A. Wagner and Noreen M. Klein
When your customer is evaluating competitors, is it better to be the first one in or the last man (or woman) standing?
** Membership Required

Just for CLOSE Members!
New! No More Limits: OnDemand CRM Goes Strategic
By Oracle Corporation and Peppers & Rogers Group
A business cannot succeed without customers. What's a product without a customer to buy it? Or a service without a customer to serve?
** Membership Required


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Experts & Opinions »

New! Next In Line For Reinvention: The Art of Selling  
By Phred Dvorak, The Wall Street Journal
Internationally heralded guru Charan identifies what is wrong with sales -- and how to fix it.

The Sales-Incentive Entitlement Culture
By David C. Bello and Summer Barnes
When variable pay designed to single out top performers converts into a reliable paycheck, motivation drops and incentive plans fail.

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In the Lead »
Articles by Carol Hymowitz, Columnist, The Wall Street Journal Online 

New!  Pay Gap Fuels Worker Woes - The gap between top executive and employee compensation has never been greater. That's triggering lower morale and productivity on some corporate staffs, and making it more difficult to attract and keep talent, even in a slowing economy.

New!  Women Tell Women: Life In Top Jobs Is Worth the Effort - Reach for the top -- and don't eliminate choices too soon or worry about the myth of balance. That's the message successful female executives are telling young women in school and in the workplace.

They Ponder Layoffs, But  Executives Still Face Gaps in Talent - In numerous studies the C-suite claim to be looking to add to their talent pool, so why are there so many layoffs, and why are companies dropping the ball when it comes to real talent in their midst?

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CMO Council Reports »  

New !  Perfect how you project
The Perfect How You Project study, an online survey of over 340 financial professionals across a wide range of industries and company sizes, was conducted by The BPM Forum and sponsored by Adaptive Planning. It underscores the critical challenges to corporate financial managers guiding their companies.

New !  Vendors fail to drive business performance
Resellers give vendors poor marks on lead value, volume and marketing campaign effectiveness.

The customer is very much on the minds of leading marketing executives these days.
Customer Affinity report results indicate marketers are spending more time and resources on their customers.

If you are selling to marketers (sorry) you better know what they intend to invest in this year!
Download the 2008 Marketing Outlook survey that reveals the budget intentions of marketers around the globe

Are you banking on brand...or embracing your customer to leverage customer affinity? Do you know the difference?
Do you know what your customers really want? In the world of B2B technology, IT buyers spoke loud and clear in the CMO Council's Customer Affinity report.

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Articles »  

New! Six Secrets to Designing Winning Presentations
By Mike Parkinson of Sales and Marketing Management Magazine
You have 13 seconds or less to make a positive first impression on your audience that may ultimately lead to a sale. So how can you effectively convey your message with so little time?

New! Analyzing the Sales Process
By Jim Dickie, a partner with CSO Insights
Based on the results of CSO Insights' latest sales performance study, it's clear that CRM has become a mainstay for sales reps: Over 70 percent of the firms we surveyed reported that they had implemented a CRM system.

Seeing Through Buyers' Eyes  
By Phred Dvorak
The everyone-wears-glasses policy at a Japanese retailer is an extreme solution to a universal management problem: How to get a handle on customers' needs.  
** Membership Required

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Webcasts and Podcasts »

New! The Cold Calling Podcast
This podcast, produced for salespeople and marketers working in the business to business environment, is about telephone prospecting and lead generation. Mike OHara and Greg Grimer cover the entire skill set you need to maximise your effectiveness at hunting out new decision-makers and prospecting new business opportunities.

New! Podcast Series: SalesRepRadio
Professional sales consultants share tips, advice and best practices on a wide variety of issues that affect sales professionals every day, on a weekly basis. Their wisdom is shared in easily digestible 10-minute audio interviews in a fast-paced "talk radio" style format.

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