News & Articles »

Operational Transformation Sets for Renewed Commitment to Marketing Performance Measurement, Reports CMO Council
By CMO Council
The 2011 State Of Marketing: Outlook, Intentions and Investments report combines perspectives from over 750 marketers globally. 
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The Gap Between Marketing and Sales Impedes Your Lead Process
By Dan McDade
One well-known analyst group documents that 70 percent or more of leads aren’t being followed up by sales. Another group claims that 80 percent of marketing investments are wasted. It would be easy to place blame and point fingers. However, neither marketing nor sales executives are really at fault. The responsibility rests with C-level executives and other senior managers who fail to understand or act upon the real problem.  Read more »

Marketing Can Do a Lot to Help Sales
By Maura Scheier-Fleming
What’s your view of your marketing department? If they’re not helping you get sales, you might not be getting your money’s worth from the marketing department. Read more »

Experts & Opinions »

Sales and Marketing Alignment is Really About People, Not Functions
By Dave Stein, of Dave Stein's Blog
The first time I remember hearing the term “sales and marketing alignment” was in the mid 90’s. By then I had served as a VP of Sales for a time, then later as a VP of Marketing. Read more >>

Sales-Marketing Alignment: What B2B Marketers can learn from a one-person team that drove a 10% prodcut demo conversion
By David Kirkpatrick, for MarketingSherpa.com
Marketing/Sales alignment receives a lot of attention because when these teams work closely together, the entire process becomes more holistic. When the two are operating in individual silos, the relationship becomes more adversarial. Read more >>

Marketing -- Don't Forget Sales
By Lisa Cramer, for B2C blog
When we work with our customers, it’s funny how several of them focus so much on getting their nurturing strategy and execution to work, that they often forget about the rest of the lead management process – working with Sales. Read more>>

Why Social Media is Important to the Sales Process
By Koka Sexton, for InsideView
Companies across the world are agreeing that social media is changing the landscape of how customers interact with brands. Airlines use social media tools like Twitter to stay on top of customer service needs, companies use social media as a marketing tool to stay engaged with customers. Read more >>

How to get Results with Social CRM
From SellingPower.com
While many companies initially tried social CRM and were disappointed with the results, best practices and proven success strategies are now starting to emerge. Sales leaders can now take definitive and positive action steps with social CRM that will put their companies in a competitive position to drive more revenue. Read more >>

4 Leadership Trends in B2B Sales and Marketing
From Sales 2.0
Recently, Selling Power magazine's publisher predicted that, of the 18 million salespeople currently employed in the United States, only 3 million will be needed by the year 2020. Read More >>

More expert insights »

Webcasts and Podcasts »

Best Prospects: Accelerate the Sales Cycle through your CRM with Customer Modeling
Thursday, June 23, 2011

Sales teams complain they don't get high quality leads from marketing. And marketing teams complain that sales doesn't follow up on the leads they are given. What if you could use customer modeling to pinpoint the best prospects and cross-sell opportunities - all directly within your CRM? Now that sounds like a forumla for sales success. Learn more >>

Podcast: Reducing the Silos Between Marketing and Sales
Many people believe that the role of marketing is primarily to create demand, while the role of the sales force is to meet that demand and build loyal long-term relationships. The truth is that both Marketing and Sales do much more than that. Unfortunately in many companies, silos exist between both organizations. Host Carlos Quintero interviews marketing professional Mike Wien to discuss this important issue and what both organizations can do to leverage each other’s talents to accelerate growth and work more effectively in support of the customer. Download podcast here >>

Podcast: How to Motivate and Coach Salespeople
AllBusiness.com's Paul Kilduff interviews Keith Rosen, Sales Advisor for AllBusiness.com and author of "Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions."

Podcast: Rapport Building in Sales
The ability to develop instant rapport and credibility is often the foundation for a successful sale, even in long sales cycle and complex sales situations. Shane Gibson, leading sale performance and sales training specialist and co-author of "Closing Bigger: the Field Guide to Closing Bigger Deals," offers his advice.

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.

Webcast and Podcast Archive »