8 Critical Success Factorsfor Lead GenerationGil.B
Until now, "lead generation" was associated with direct mail campaigns, sometimes supported by a flashy website, sporadic trade show appearances, intense email blasts or stabs at telemarketing, but with very little, if any, special attention brought to bear on the complex sale.
Meanwhile, marketers are constantly reminded that the company needs more sales leads NOW. Unfortunately, that immediacy often means sacrificing quality for sheer quantity.
A flood of ordinary, low-quality leads doesn\'t mean better sales - so why waste your time? The challenge is to adopt lead generation programs that will increase the odds of creating better sales leads, ultimately resulting in long-term, happy and profitable customers.
Modern marketing - what's changed and what can we do about it? This guide looks at the most effective B2B marketing strategies in today's business climate.
Sales and Marketing Alignment, Content Reuse with WittyParrot webinar present...Mark Gibson
Part 1 of a 2 part webinar, Sales and Marketing Alignment, Content Capture and Reuse using WittyParrot.
Will be of interest to marketers, sales enablement professionals and sales leaders.
8 Critical Success Factorsfor Lead GenerationGil.B
Until now, "lead generation" was associated with direct mail campaigns, sometimes supported by a flashy website, sporadic trade show appearances, intense email blasts or stabs at telemarketing, but with very little, if any, special attention brought to bear on the complex sale.
Meanwhile, marketers are constantly reminded that the company needs more sales leads NOW. Unfortunately, that immediacy often means sacrificing quality for sheer quantity.
A flood of ordinary, low-quality leads doesn\'t mean better sales - so why waste your time? The challenge is to adopt lead generation programs that will increase the odds of creating better sales leads, ultimately resulting in long-term, happy and profitable customers.
Modern marketing - what's changed and what can we do about it? This guide looks at the most effective B2B marketing strategies in today's business climate.
Sales and Marketing Alignment, Content Reuse with WittyParrot webinar present...Mark Gibson
Part 1 of a 2 part webinar, Sales and Marketing Alignment, Content Capture and Reuse using WittyParrot.
Will be of interest to marketers, sales enablement professionals and sales leaders.
Audience Targeting Techniques for B2B MarketersTodd Ebert
According to Google’s Changing Face of B2B Marketing, many B2B marketers operate under the myth that B2B marketing should only target the highest-level executives. In reality, the decision-making ecosystem has dramatically changed. 81% of non-C suite workers now have a say in purchase decisions.
“B2B marketers need to understand that it’s not just about targeting a specific buyer, online. The B2B decision making process is a journey that involves not just one audience, but many. Company influencers and end users actually weigh in on the purchase decision,” says Todd Ebert, MultiView’s Chief Marketing Officer.
This ebook shows B2B marketers how to navigate today’s changing world of digital marketing by understanding online audiences and applying a variety of audience targeting techniques.
One of today’s biggest misconceptions about sales is that “great products and services sell themselves.” But when salespeople lack the tools or knowledge they need to do their jobs, it doesn’t matter how great the product is—sales suffer.
What are the principles and practices at the heart of sales enablement?
It's Sales AND Marketing, NOT Sales OR MarketingRichard Hatheway
Sales and Marketing departments are critical, integral functions to businesses. As such, they need to work together to ensure that the desired outcome for both functions - sales - occurs. Unfortunately, that often does not happen.
Presentation by Paul Everett at the B2B Summit 2013, London. Uncut, with a whole extra bonus 6 or 7 slides.
Here's the first six sins (see the presentation for number seven!):
One: data: we didn’t know you existed
Two: Brand: you didn’t know we existed
Three: Content: we tried to appeal to everyone
Four: Calls to action: we left you on your own
Five: Sales alignment: no-one followed up the leads
Six: Focus: we didn’t have time to equip sales to sell
B2B Lead Generation - Bridge the Divide Between Sales & Marketing3D2B
Generating high-quality leads is the biggest challenge for marketing organizations. Learn how tele-services can bring the human touch to your lead generation efforts.
Marketing & Sales Witnessing the Biggest Business IntegrationHarsh
Who determines the target customer?
Who controls the buying process?
Who rakes in revenue?
Know all the answers in this e-book.
To know more, visit - www.denave.com
In a recent survey of B2B marketing executives, we learned that messaging is one of the biggest challenges they face. Do they have the right personas? Do they understand the issues that matter to those personas? Do they know how to map the value proposition of their solution to those issues? And do they know how to describe their value in terms that resonate with the people they want to sell to?
It turns out that in many cases, they don't.
When messaging is off, it is like shouting to people in a foreign language -- Nobody understands what is being said. Consequently there will be adverse effects across the marketing spectrum:
- Content Marketing topics will be less relevant
- SEO and SEM strategies will target the wrong phrases
- Web copy will mean little to visitors of your site
- Lead generation campaigns will under-perform
This ebook reviews some of the symptoms and reasons for ineffective messaging, and lists a number of steps readers can take to get it right.
Know:
- Who to call on.
- What to say.
- How to reach them.
More information can be found at:
http://thirdsidesolutions.com/messaging-get-it-right/
Rethinking the classic marketing to sales funnel for the digital age and the demands of ROI in your marketing.
There are two important reasons we all need to revisit the classic marketing to sales familiar funnel: 1) the disruption of this digital age, not just the Internet but the Internet of Everything and digital’s disruptive effect on marketing programs and plans. 2) the mounting leadership demand for ROI and other metrics to prove the worth of our marketing and to calculate the effectiveness of our sales efforts.
You will learn:
–How to rethink the purpose of marketing as a lead generation engine and explain your marketing program to leaders
–How a digital sales force can allow marketers to go direct to prospects and create interest and leads without as much hands on effort from your busy or otherwise BD-challenged professionals
–The fundamentals of getting clear, noticed, and chosen and how those things help you get results.
–The importance of compelling content as digital jet fuel for a digital sales force
–The difference between branded anchor content and chatter content
Greysmoke's 11 Maxims on B2B Demand Generation CampaignsBaker Egerton
A visual whitepaper describing 11 fundamentals that every demand generation campaign for the enterprise should consider. Helpful insight for anyone who wants a peek at some of the complex considerations surrounding campaigns.
Content Marketing - What Big Business Discovered and How to Use ItSteve Faber
Content marketing is all the rage these days, with 2013 showing signs that even more marketers are embracing it. There is a good reason for that. Consumers, in both the B2B and B2C environments, respond very well to a properly run content marketing casmpaign. Large organizations have spent big money discovering what works and what doesn't. Use what they've learned about content marketing to power your organization's marketing strategy going forward. 49 pages
RiseFuel's Beginners Guide to Inbound MarketingTony Shannon
By now, we've all heard how valuable—even essential—inbound marketing can be for growing sales and finding new customers. Whether your current sentiment leans more toward enthusiasm or trepidation, there's no way around the fact that inbound marketing is far more complex field than it first seems.
Diving in without a sense for what it's like can be overwhelming, and building a marketing strategy that provides real value takes both savvy and hard work, but fear not—we're here to help!
One important idea in economics is that of needs and wants. Needs would be defined as goods or services that are required. This would include the needs for food, clothing, shelter and health care. Wants are goods or services that are not necessary but that we desire or wish for.
'Demand' An economic principle that describes a consumer's desire and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service. Holding all other factors constant, the price of a good or service increases as its demand increases and vice versa
Audience Targeting Techniques for B2B MarketersTodd Ebert
According to Google’s Changing Face of B2B Marketing, many B2B marketers operate under the myth that B2B marketing should only target the highest-level executives. In reality, the decision-making ecosystem has dramatically changed. 81% of non-C suite workers now have a say in purchase decisions.
“B2B marketers need to understand that it’s not just about targeting a specific buyer, online. The B2B decision making process is a journey that involves not just one audience, but many. Company influencers and end users actually weigh in on the purchase decision,” says Todd Ebert, MultiView’s Chief Marketing Officer.
This ebook shows B2B marketers how to navigate today’s changing world of digital marketing by understanding online audiences and applying a variety of audience targeting techniques.
One of today’s biggest misconceptions about sales is that “great products and services sell themselves.” But when salespeople lack the tools or knowledge they need to do their jobs, it doesn’t matter how great the product is—sales suffer.
What are the principles and practices at the heart of sales enablement?
It's Sales AND Marketing, NOT Sales OR MarketingRichard Hatheway
Sales and Marketing departments are critical, integral functions to businesses. As such, they need to work together to ensure that the desired outcome for both functions - sales - occurs. Unfortunately, that often does not happen.
Presentation by Paul Everett at the B2B Summit 2013, London. Uncut, with a whole extra bonus 6 or 7 slides.
Here's the first six sins (see the presentation for number seven!):
One: data: we didn’t know you existed
Two: Brand: you didn’t know we existed
Three: Content: we tried to appeal to everyone
Four: Calls to action: we left you on your own
Five: Sales alignment: no-one followed up the leads
Six: Focus: we didn’t have time to equip sales to sell
B2B Lead Generation - Bridge the Divide Between Sales & Marketing3D2B
Generating high-quality leads is the biggest challenge for marketing organizations. Learn how tele-services can bring the human touch to your lead generation efforts.
Marketing & Sales Witnessing the Biggest Business IntegrationHarsh
Who determines the target customer?
Who controls the buying process?
Who rakes in revenue?
Know all the answers in this e-book.
To know more, visit - www.denave.com
In a recent survey of B2B marketing executives, we learned that messaging is one of the biggest challenges they face. Do they have the right personas? Do they understand the issues that matter to those personas? Do they know how to map the value proposition of their solution to those issues? And do they know how to describe their value in terms that resonate with the people they want to sell to?
It turns out that in many cases, they don't.
When messaging is off, it is like shouting to people in a foreign language -- Nobody understands what is being said. Consequently there will be adverse effects across the marketing spectrum:
- Content Marketing topics will be less relevant
- SEO and SEM strategies will target the wrong phrases
- Web copy will mean little to visitors of your site
- Lead generation campaigns will under-perform
This ebook reviews some of the symptoms and reasons for ineffective messaging, and lists a number of steps readers can take to get it right.
Know:
- Who to call on.
- What to say.
- How to reach them.
More information can be found at:
http://thirdsidesolutions.com/messaging-get-it-right/
Rethinking the classic marketing to sales funnel for the digital age and the demands of ROI in your marketing.
There are two important reasons we all need to revisit the classic marketing to sales familiar funnel: 1) the disruption of this digital age, not just the Internet but the Internet of Everything and digital’s disruptive effect on marketing programs and plans. 2) the mounting leadership demand for ROI and other metrics to prove the worth of our marketing and to calculate the effectiveness of our sales efforts.
You will learn:
–How to rethink the purpose of marketing as a lead generation engine and explain your marketing program to leaders
–How a digital sales force can allow marketers to go direct to prospects and create interest and leads without as much hands on effort from your busy or otherwise BD-challenged professionals
–The fundamentals of getting clear, noticed, and chosen and how those things help you get results.
–The importance of compelling content as digital jet fuel for a digital sales force
–The difference between branded anchor content and chatter content
Greysmoke's 11 Maxims on B2B Demand Generation CampaignsBaker Egerton
A visual whitepaper describing 11 fundamentals that every demand generation campaign for the enterprise should consider. Helpful insight for anyone who wants a peek at some of the complex considerations surrounding campaigns.
Content Marketing - What Big Business Discovered and How to Use ItSteve Faber
Content marketing is all the rage these days, with 2013 showing signs that even more marketers are embracing it. There is a good reason for that. Consumers, in both the B2B and B2C environments, respond very well to a properly run content marketing casmpaign. Large organizations have spent big money discovering what works and what doesn't. Use what they've learned about content marketing to power your organization's marketing strategy going forward. 49 pages
RiseFuel's Beginners Guide to Inbound MarketingTony Shannon
By now, we've all heard how valuable—even essential—inbound marketing can be for growing sales and finding new customers. Whether your current sentiment leans more toward enthusiasm or trepidation, there's no way around the fact that inbound marketing is far more complex field than it first seems.
Diving in without a sense for what it's like can be overwhelming, and building a marketing strategy that provides real value takes both savvy and hard work, but fear not—we're here to help!
One important idea in economics is that of needs and wants. Needs would be defined as goods or services that are required. This would include the needs for food, clothing, shelter and health care. Wants are goods or services that are not necessary but that we desire or wish for.
'Demand' An economic principle that describes a consumer's desire and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service. Holding all other factors constant, the price of a good or service increases as its demand increases and vice versa
JMS is known as standard way to implement distributed work with messaging in Java world. There are many JMS providers, both open source and commercial. Large percent of developers use JMS for almost every case when they want to sent message and process it on the other side. But now there are many alternative solutions to organize message queues: AMQP, Redis, ZooKeeper, Apache Kafka or even custom solutions based on Cassandra. Why not to use them instead of JMS? In this talk we will discuss key “issues” in any messaging system and then with this knowledge in mind look once again at JMS and alternative approaches using practical cases from my experience. May be after this talk some more people will stop using JMS and start using their mind. :)
Customer Journey Maps and Buyer PersonasGoodbuzz Inc.
Today’s buyers have more ways to interact with businesses than ever, but this increase in communication channels and platforms doesn’t necessarily translate to a positive customer experience: Only 22 percent of consumers say the average retailer understands them as an individual, and only 21 percent say the communications they receive from the average retailer are “usually relevant.”
Many small business owners confuse the disciplines of Sales and Marketing, in this presentation, we look at how they differ, and why companies should align both.
Marketing and Sales alignment is paramount for success with any organization. Learn to create synergy between your teams for maximum impact for your sales. Revenue generation is the objective any effective marketing campaign, so aligning with your sales efforts will lead to a success and sustainability.
A quick presentation for startup teams willing to experiment with new marketing tools.
Teams who are trying to sell to B2B need to implement scalable ways to sell to their clients. Inbound Marketing is entirely based on content creation and allows team to create a process to generate more qualified leads.
In this presentation you'll find some explanation on how to implement inbound quickly and what are the needs for your team.
My name is Aziz Morsly - you can contact me @azizmorsly
Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customers’ relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholder.
10 Video Ideas Any Business Can Make RIGHT NOW!
You'll never draw a blank again on what kind of video to make for your business. Go beyond the basic categories and truly reimagine a brand new advanced way to brainstorm video content creation. During this masterclass you'll be challenged to think creatively and outside of the box and view your videos through lenses you may have never thought of previously. It's guaranteed that you'll leave with more than 10 video ideas, but I like to under-promise and over-deliver. Don't miss this session.
Key Takeaways:
How to use the Video Matrix
How to use additional "Lenses"
Where to source original video ideas
For too many years marketing and sales have operated in silos...while in some forward thinking companies, the two organizations work together to drive new opportunity development and revenue. This session will explore the lessons learned in that beautiful dance that can occur when marketing and sales work together...to drive new opportunity development, account expansion and customer satisfaction.
No, this is not a conversation about MQLs and SQLs. Instead we will focus on a framework that allows the two organizations to drive company success together.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
How to Run Landing Page Tests On and Off Paid Social PlatformsVWO
Join us for an exclusive webinar featuring Mariate, Alexandra and Nima where we will unveil a comprehensive blueprint for crafting a successful paid media strategy focused on landing page testing.With escalating costs in paid advertising, understanding how to maximize each visitor’s experience is crucial for retention and conversion.
This session will dive into the methodologies for executing and analyzing landing page tests within paid social channels, offering a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical insights.
The Pearmill team will guide you through the nuances of setting up and managing landing page experiments on paid social platforms. You will learn about the critical rules to follow, the structure of effective tests, optimal conversion duration and budget allocation.
The session will also cover data analysis techniques and criteria for graduating landing pages.
In the second part of the webinar, Pearmill will explore the use of A/B testing platforms. Discover common pitfalls to avoid in A/B testing and gain insights into analyzing A/B tests results effectively.
Videos are more engaging, more memorable, and more popular than any other type of content out there. That’s why it’s estimated that 82% of consumer traffic will come from videos by 2025.
And with videos evolving from landscape to portrait and experts promoting shorter clips, one thing remains constant – our brains LOVE videos.
So is there science behind what makes people absolutely irresistible on camera?
The answer: definitely yes.
In this jam-packed session with Stephanie Garcia, you’ll get your hands on a steal-worthy guide that uncovers the art and science to being irresistible on camera. From body language to words that convert, she’ll show you how to captivate on command so that viewers are excited and ready to take action.
Digital Money Maker Club – von Gunnar Kessler digital.focsh890
Title One is a comprehensive examination of the impact of digital technologies on
modern society. In a world where technology continues to advance rapidly, this article delves into the nuances and complexities of the digital age, exploring Its implications across various sectors and aspects of life.
A.I. (artificial intelligence) platforms are popping up all the time, and many of them can and should be used to help grow your brand, increase your sales and decrease your marketing costs.In this presentation:We will review some of the best AI platforms that are available for you to use.We will interact with some of the platforms in real-time, so attendees can see how they work.We will also look at some current brands that are using AI to help them create marketing messages, saving them time and money in the process. Lastly, we will discuss the pros and cons of using AI in marketing & branding and have a lively conversation that includes comments from the audience.
Key Takeaways:
Attendees will learn about LLM platforms, like ChatGPT, and how they work, with preset examples and real time interactions with the platform. Attendees will learn about other AI platforms that are creating graphic design elements at the push of a button...pre-set examples and real-time interactions.Attendees will discuss the pros & cons of AI in marketing + branding and share their perspectives with one another. Attendees will learn about the cost savings and the time savings associated with using AI, should they choose to.
Mastering Local SEO for Service Businesses in the AI Era is tailored specifically for local service providers like plumbers, dentists, and others seeking to dominate their local search landscape. This session delves into leveraging AI advancements to enhance your online visibility and search rankings through the Content Factory model, designed for creating high-impact, SEO-driven content. Discover the Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy, a cost-effective approach to boost your local SEO efforts and attract more customers with minimal investment. Gain practical insights on optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs of local service seekers, ensuring your business not only appears but stands out in local searches. This concise, action-oriented workshop is your roadmap to navigating the complexities of digital marketing in the AI age, driving more leads, conversions, and ultimately, success for your local service business.
Key Takeaways:
Embrace AI for Local SEO: Learn to harness the power of AI technologies to optimize your website and content for local search. Understand the pivotal role AI plays in analyzing search trends and consumer behavior, enabling you to tailor your SEO strategies to meet the specific demands of your target local audience. Leverage the Content Factory Model: Discover the step-by-step process of creating SEO-optimized content at scale. This approach ensures a steady stream of high-quality content that engages local customers and boosts your search rankings. Get an action guide on implementing this model, complete with templates and scheduling strategies to maintain a consistent online presence. Maximize ROI with Dollar-a-Day Advertising: Dive into the cost-effective Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy that amplifies your visibility in local searches without breaking the bank. Learn how to strategically allocate your budget across platforms to target potential local customers effectively. The session includes an action guide on setting up, monitoring, and optimizing your ad campaigns to ensure maximum impact with minimal investment.
Monthly Social Media News Update May 2024Andy Lambert
TL;DR. These are the three themes that stood out to us over the course of last month.
1️⃣ Social media is becoming increasingly significant for brand discovery. Marketers are now understanding the impact of social and budgets are shifting accordingly.
2️⃣ Instagram’s new algorithm and latest guidance will help us maintain organic growth. Instagram continues to evolve, but Reels remains the most crucial tool for growth.
3️⃣ Collaboration will help us unlock growth. Who we work with will define how fast we grow. Meta continues to evolve their Creator Marketplace and now TikTok are beginning to push ‘collabs’ more too.
Most small businesses struggle to see marketing results. In this session, we will eliminate any confusion about what to do next, solving your marketing problems so your business can thrive. You’ll learn how to create a foundational marketing OS (operating system) based on neuroscience and backed by real-world results. You’ll be taught how to develop deep customer connections, and how to have your CRM dynamically segment and sell at any stage in the customer’s journey. By the end of the session, you’ll remove confusion and chaos and replace it with clarity and confidence for long-term marketing success.
Key Takeaways:
• Uncover the power of a foundational marketing system that dynamically communicates with prospects and customers on autopilot.
• Harness neuroscience and Tribal Alignment to transform your communication strategies, turning potential clients into fans and those fans into loyal customers.
• Discover the art of automated segmentation, pinpointing your most lucrative customers and identifying the optimal moments for successful conversions.
• Streamline your business with a content production plan that eliminates guesswork, wasted time, and money.
SMM Cheap - No. 1 SMM panel in the worldsmmpanel567
Boost your social media marketing with our SMM Panel services offering SMM Cheap services! Get cost-effective services for your business and increase followers, likes, and engagement across all social media platforms. Get affordable services perfect for businesses and influencers looking to increase their social proof. See how cheap SMM strategies can help improve your social media presence and be a pro at the social media game.
Short video marketing has sweeped the nation and is the fastest way to build an online brand on social media in 2024. In this session you will learn:- What is short video marketing- Which platforms work best for your business- Content strategies that are on brand for your business- How to sell organically without paying for ads.
Metaverse Marketing in the Generation of the Internet - Eugene Capon
Thoughtful Selling™
1. Turn greater insight into clear differentiation
and increased revenues
Thoughtful SellingTM
1
2. CEOs and corporate directors are facing a difficult reality: their
organizations are simply unable to create and deliver a compelling
story that differentiates their solutions from the rest of the market.
The explosion of products and services has crowded the market and
confused customers. Similar messages are coming from you and your
competitors, despite massive attempts in messaging upgrades.
Meanwhile, buyers are uncovering the vast majority of their information
from the Internet and forming their own opinions before they actually
engage with you. In fact, a recent study showed that customers and
prospects find nearly 70% of their product information on their own.
(The other 30% is split evenly between Marketing and Sales.)
Finally, these smarter buyers expect customer-facing personnel,
regardless of title or job description, to engage with a comparable level
of understanding. They are less and less tolerant of suppliers who don’t
appreciate their problems—and have zero tolerance for salespeople
without a viable solution to these problems.
Differentiation is critical—and difficult
Hearing similar messages from
you and your competitors
Finding their information from
the Internet
Less tolerant of suppliers who
don’t understand
Thoughtful SellingTM
Your customers are...
?
?
2
3. The ironic result? Companies are producing
record amounts of content to support and
combat the current environment. But when
you get the content machine in full gear,
you often diminish the quality of what you’re
producing—not to mention the value it
offers the person consuming it.
Most companies are building high-level
messages around what a company does
or tactical messages about what products do.
They’re speaking at the 20,000 foot level or
the 2,000 foot level. What’s often missing
is what’s in between.
That “in between,” which we call the
“insight gap,” is the place where dots
get connected from brand to product.
How do you connect your buyers with
the information they care about?
Our customers’ journeys have gotten
incredibly complex. At the same time, your
customer-facing teams are working hard to
sell higher and go deeper into their accounts.
And, your marketers and sales enablers are
being asked to create tools and assets to help
reach more targets in more ways. However,
that’s no small task. Everybody is trying to
be a trusted advisor to their customers,
but most campaigns and conversations are
not grounded in a way that supports the
objective. That’s because brand pillars and
product messages don’t resonate with
buyers and budget holders.
Connecting your buyers with your information
20,000 ft.
brand positioning
2,000 ft.
product messages
Insight Gap
Thoughtful SellingTM
Insight Gap
3
4. They might say,
“I need to know that the solution works.
When it doesn’t work, they call me.”
For these titles, we want to share insight that is
focused on experience and expertise—things
like lessons learned and best practices—because
they’re looking for suppliers that can help them
interpret “the now.” Most organizations know how
to create content for this target. But, there are two
problems to think about: the first is whether or not
the percentage of the content you produce is too
great and second is whether you’ve armed your
salespeople with the proper context for using this
content in their conversation paths.
They might say,
“I need to know that there’s a system
and process for solving this problem.
If it isn’t repeatable or if it doesn’t
deliver on the goal, they’ll call me.”
For these titles, we suggest insight that is focused
on “applied perspective”: a data-driven strategy
that is supplemented with understanding of that
data by your subject matter experts. This is an area
where many people struggle because it’s where
invention happens and often requires support
from parts of your organization that are outside
your control.
They might say,
“I need to know that we’re making
the right choice for the long haul,
and that this supplier will help me
plan our technology future.”
For these titles, we suggest insight that is visionary.
This is your executive-to-executive story and usually
includes views from industry experts and thought
leaders.
How to close the insight gap
SVPs/C-level
executives
are our Take
Us Forward
People.
Directors/VPs
are our
Model It
People.
Managers/
directors
are our Prove
It People.
NOW FUTURE
Thoughtful SellingTM
4
5. You can mix and match these models depending on your goals.
The point is to make more informed decisions about how you invest
in perspective—developing content that’s aligned with the target
you’re trying to reach and what you want to say to them. Additionally,
it’s critical to ensure that salespeople understand how to use this
information as part of a conversation path.
Before Sales can be activated to carry its part of story into customers
and prospects, however, you should build sales requirements.
For example, you can’t send a new sales rep into a manager-level
contact with visionary data. Likewise, the C-suite rarely asks about
IT best practices.
Sales leaders must determine what type of customer-facing individual
should present a specific message. Maybe it’s a pre-salesperson.
Perhaps it’s an overlay global account person or the everyday account
exec. Whoever it is, that individual takes a narrative—a specific
conversation—to the buyer. Instead of selling products, the rep is
sharing insight—and walking into the account prepared with
intelligence that prospects won’t find anywhere else.
Thoughtful SellingTM
5
“If the sales team falls short of the goal, whose fault is it?
Program managers need to identify what type of skills are
required to bring a message forward and what the approach
should look like.”
6. Connecting Sales and Marketing activities
Marketing/
Sales Enablement
“Hey Sales,
Here’s a copy of a cool campaign we
just launched. People can win an iPad.
We’ll send you some leads.
PS - Here are 20 questions you can
ask them.”
“Hey Marketing,
Thanks for the stuff. We couldn’t
use it so we made our own.
Here’s what we made.
PS - Thanks for paying for it!”
Thoughtful SellingTM
Once you’ve determined the kinds of insight you want to create for
the different targets you care about, you’ll need to plan an execution
path. Typical routes include inbound and outbound campaigns and
sales conversations. The trouble is, these two sets of activities
are often disjointed and disintegrated, which causes confusion.
And, this confusion leads to missed opportunities.
6
Often, we see Marketing create a campaign and “throw it over the fence” without proper tools. Or, we see Sales develop its
own messages and assets because it doesn’t like or understand what it’s getting from Marketing.
There’s no wonder, then, that buyers (and even sellers themselves) are increasingly rating salespeople unprepared for the
conversations taking place. After all, sellers have often only been part of the Sales-side of the process—and have little or no
data regarding Marketing’s efforts.
7. Creating high-performance programs
It seems obvious that a synchronized approach to marketing campaigns
and sales enablement would produce better results. Most organizations
aren’t architected to sustain this model, however. Professionals work
in Marketing, Demand Gen, Sales Enablement or Thought Leadership.
They have a specific budget and are tasked with specific responsibilities
in support of specific group goals and specific corporate directives.
And, they often don’t have the time or authority to move beyond.
But no matter where you sit in your organization, we believe that
you can spend the same amount of time, energy, and money on your
strategies and produce content that your competitors won’t have.
That differentiating content would be based on insight that other parts
of your organization can (and should) leverage for their own efforts.
We call this the Thoughtful Selling model for creating high-performance
programs.
Thoughtful SellingTM
Investment
Unique
Insights
Campaigns
Conversations Revenue
Unique
Insights
Campaigns
Conversations
Sales Readiness
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Thoughtful SellingTM Model
Thoughtful SellingTM Model
8. Getting started
By following a Thoughtful Selling model, you can anchor your corporate
knowledge in a way that’s valuable and easy to carry forward to your
targeted audiences. In the process, you’ll eliminate confusion and
create competitive advantage. And, you’ll truly become that trusted
advisor we all strive to be.
Thoughtful SellingTM
1. Look at where you have the opportunity to make a real impact.
Connecting the dots between brand and product is where organizations struggle most--and where
differentiation begins.
2. Align your efforts in a way that supports a longer, bigger conversation path.
Executives are attracted to “forward-lean” perspectives that help them plan for the future.
3. Integrate across silos.
If you’re in Marketing, think about what tools salespeople really need to have appropriate and meaningful
discussions. If you’re in Sales Enablement, think about how thought leadership-driven campaigns can
provide the foundation for better selling scenarios.
4. Identify a few metrics to measure.
Make sure you have defined what success looks like.
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Here are some things you can do now to become more
thoughtful in how you approach campaigns and conversations:
9. Launch International is a strategy and services firm that helps companies build
and execute high-performance, integrated marketing and sales enablement
programs.
We help our clients rethink the way they approach interactions with buyers—
both through their campaign activities and their sales conversations—to make
sure they are insight-based, customer-centric, aligned to the audience and
need, and synchronized across both marketing and sales activities.
Contact us to learn more about how Launch International can help you find
your way to a more predictable path to revenue.
www.launchinternational.com
(p) 215-230-4340 Thoughtful SellingTM
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Think differently about the road to revenue