Pointclear

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

As an editor and marketer, I spend a lot of time thinking about the “how to”—in other words, how to translate the best and more interesting marketing ideas into truly actionable steps for organizations looking to grow their business. In other words: B2B marketers + social = lots of room for improvement.

Trends 180

Trends B2B Social Media Marketing 180

Sales and Marketing Management

SEPTEMBER 6, 2019

Smart companies saw the possibilities of cyber customer service from the beginning, and jumped right on that bandwagon. Similarly, cutting-edge marketing and customer service gurus saw the advent of social media platforms as a golden opportunity to set themselves apart from the crowd. Don’t @ Me.

Social Media 184

Social Media Outsourcing Services Customer Service Media 184

The Center for Sales Strategy

AUGUST 3, 2021

However, don’t let that fool you; as you can see, it’s still a very competitive job market out there. In part, because smart companies are examining their talent and prioritizing their top performers. Although lowering, unemployment rates are still much higher than we’ve seen in recent years.

Trends 62

Trends Smart Company Guarantee Competition 62

Crunchbase

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Any company involved in selling needs to decide where to center its efforts: outbound or inbound sales. Balancing outbound selling and inbound selling will enable you to prep your sales team to deliver the right strategies at the right moment. What are outbound sales? What are inbound sales?

Inbound 52

Inbound Outbound Ideal Customer Profile Strategy 52

Hubspot Sales

DECEMBER 16, 2020

From the sales floor to the makeshift home office set up, salespeople of all kinds in all industries have faced a myriad of challenges and roadblocks this year. Mintis Hankerson is a Senior Sales Manager at HubSpot. For Mintis, 2020 has been all about balancing empathy with sales achievement.

Real Estate 140

Real Estate Face-to-face Forecasting Hubspot 140

Engage Selling

JUNE 2, 2018

Smart companies today measure their lead acquisition cost, their marketing costs and their sales cost. But what about the overall cost to serve your customer? That often gets overlooked. And yet that’s precisely where you can see both the risk … Read More »

Smart Company 54

Smart Company Leads Customer Marketing Qualified Lead 54

Sales Hacker

JUNE 20, 2022

It is our job as leaders and sales professionals to prepare for such an eventuality. 10 key points for sales leaders. What I share with you below is a distillation of incredible advice from sales leaders and professionals, as well as my own experiences. Sellers don’t just look to their sales leader for reassurance.

Lead Rank 89

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Leads Marketing Qualified Lead 89

Partners in Excellence

APRIL 13, 2018

On top of all these tools I leverage, I have a number of Google Alerts set up to keep me updated with key things happening with industries, markets, or with people I’m tracking. I just got my first “SMART Company Brief” from DecisionLink. But the issue comes up, what do I do with all of this information?

Smart Company 70

Smart Company Analysis Face-to-face Competition 70

The Pipeline

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Pricing continues a key factor in winning or losing sales opportunities, and while few vendors take pride in being the low cost provider, at times it seems they set out to be just that, or they take few steps to avoid it being forced on them. I say rarely, because I have met leaders who seem to work like that, but don’t articulate that way.

Vendor 299

Vendor Margin Smart Company Buyer 299

LeadFuze

JULY 25, 2021

Grab our checklist for your New Product Launch Marketing Plan’s Client Onboarding Process. When you provide a service, either physical (like a marketing agency) or software (like a SaaS) it can be like that. There are a lot of moving pieces to the post-sale process. Now, let’s get into the nuts and bolts.

Lead Rank 124

Lead Rank Lead Scoring Top of Funnel Churn 124

Hubspot Sales

MAY 10, 2018

Bad sales advice is shockingly common -- and you don’t want to find out you’ve been misdirected the hard way. After all, every mistake means it’s harder to achieve your sales goals. I once worked for a manager who put a great deal of emphasis on activity metrics rather than actual sales results. 1) “Focus solely on activity.”.

Hiring 106

Hiring Hubspot Inbound Promotion 106

Sell Integrity

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

This customer-needs-focused approach is often thought of in the context of the sales and service teams. But in a customer-centric culture, everyone thinks this way, from marketing to finance to IT to product development. They know their place in the market and are admired by employees and customers alike.

Strategy 117

Strategy Customer Loyalty Coaching 117

Cincom Smart Selling

MAY 8, 2024

Smart companies research target audiences thoroughly in order to tailor messaging: Develop specific persona profiles exploring both demographics and psychographics of ideal customers Identify optimal communication channels—email, web, mobile, etc. Clear, relevant communication is crucial for any company.

Ideal Customer Profile 62

Ideal Customer Profile Top of Funnel Customer Scale 62

Pipeliner

MAY 13, 2020

From new employee management strategies to cutting-edge innovations in marketing, the year ahead is headed towards booming success for companies that align their strategies accordingly. Recent studies show a whopping 84% of companies that have current hiring needs anticipate using executive recruiters to fill those roles.

Hiring 98

Hiring Trends Ideal Customer Profile Retention 98

Cience

DECEMBER 1, 2020

Your customers are one of your company’s most important assets. Although new sales are important, smart companies also focus on retention. Source: Bain & Company. Smart companies work proactively to make their customers feel seen and heard. That’s where sales and marketing automation comes in.

Retention 96

Retention Webinar Metrics CRM Ideal Customer Profile 96

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 21, 2019

Companies that prepare for and embrace the changes AI brings will thrive. Sales is traditionally a people-to-people business, but technologies like artificial intelligence are making expert sellers rethink the balance between human and machine. The need for automation in sales. The potential future of AI for sales.

Ideal Customer Profile 85

Ideal Customer Profile How To Churn Face-to-face 85

SalesLoft

FEBRUARY 13, 2017

86 percent of marketing and sales professionals stated that they have begun utilizing targeted account strategies. Marketing organizations have been seeing great success from account-based programs for years. And smart companies are realizing that that success can also be seen in other parts of the company, particularly sales.

Account 52

Account Scale Account Based Marketing Hotels 52

Women Sales Pros

JUNE 7, 2019

We will make you an exclusive, premium or featured partner to market your own business. In a time when it is increasingly difficult to have a truly unique product and to sustain it at a truly competitive price, the greatest advantage a company can have is its people. We will finance your purchase or extend favorable credit terms.

Lead Scoring 103

Lead Scoring Lead Rank Buyer Smart Company 103

Sales Training Connection

AUGUST 22, 2012

Schrage was exploring how smart companies increasingly recognize that their own futures depend on how ingeniously they invest in the future capabilities of their customers. Let’s look at Schrage’s key points and then translate it to the world of sales. Sales gets a seat at the innovation table.

Engineering 102

Engineering Smart Company Training Benefit 102

Cincom Smart Selling

JANUARY 27, 2015

Smart companies don’t have software initiatives; they have business initiatives that drive software purchases. The larger you become, the harder it is to keep track of dealers’ pipelines and forecasting your own sales. While a CPQ system can provide many sales functions, it doesn’t usually have a services module; but CRM does.

Scale 48

Scale Smart Company CRM Microsoft 48

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 28, 2018

In the world of B2B sales, the conventional thinking has become especially stark. For this specific survey we spoke to more than 300 B2B buyers, representing a cross-section of goods and services, company sizes and vertical markets. B2B buyers reported a significant need for improved engagement with seller companies.

Buyer 79

Buyer B2B B2C Survey 79

Factor 8

AUGUST 8, 2019

If you’re growing or starting up a team, you’re wise to spend time researching the type of rep that will best suit your sales process, talent pool, and customer preferences. And if you’re researching roles in sales, even better. Let’s dig in – starting with the top of the sales funnel or beginning of the buying process.

Inside Sales 31

Inside Sales Hiring Lead Rank Top of Funnel 31

Braveheart Sales

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

We’re very unlikely to see wage deflation in the US market. Of course, smart companies play the arbitrage game: When costs are rising, pass along the price increases as quickly as you can while you try to delay accepting the cost increases from your suppliers as long as possible. Once wage inflation happens, it sticks.

Margin 40

Margin Insurance Insurance Energy 40

SBI

JUNE 10, 2015

This post is part of a series of Executive Interviews of top sales and marketing solutions company executives. What problem/s are you solving for sales and/or marketing organizations? What problem/s are you solving for sales and/or marketing organizations? Nancy: What does Unboxed do?

Up-Sell 50

Up-Sell Decision Maker Revenue Closing 50

Mindtickle

JULY 2, 2016

Tweet This: Smart companies have realized that customer loyalty is the most powerful sales and marketing tool that they have. Tweet This: When you improve your product so it does the customer’s job better, then you gain market share. Karl Wirth , Founder & CEO at Evergage. Mary Barra , CEO at General Motors.

Customer 52

Customer Loyalty Microsoft Smart Company 52

Mindtickle

JULY 2, 2016

Tweet This: Smart companies have realized that customer loyalty is the most powerful sales and marketing tool that they have. Tweet This: When you improve your product so it does the customer’s job better, then you gain market share. Karl Wirth , Founder & CEO at Evergage. Mary Barra , CEO at General Motors.

Customer 52

Customer Loyalty Microsoft Smart Company 52

The Brooks Group

APRIL 1, 2016

As sales leaders, we are inspired by leadership books, seminars, and articles, but when it comes to translating that inspiration into new behaviors, we often hit a roadblock. . An average strategy well executed will always outperform a superior business strategy which is poorly executed. .

Closing 63

Closing Smart Company Exercises Intent 63

The Brooks Group

OCTOBER 18, 2010

Part of our mission statement at The Brooks Group is to help our clients build Sales Cultures. What’s a sales culture.” The sales department must be or have the potential to be profitable. If there's no profit derived from the sales department, it's hard to justify its existence. Aggressiveness is rewarded in sales.

Collateral 40

Collateral Enterprise Enterprise Smart Company 40

Your Sales Management Guru

OCTOBER 13, 2015

In recent years, organizations have gotten better at analyzing financial statements, refining manufacturing procedures, reengineering business systems and improving marketing effectiveness. But one area where additional improvements still can be made is the sales organization. They often lack both a strategic and tactical sales plan.

Revenue 40

Revenue Hiring System Case Study 40

Partners in Excellence

JULY 5, 2016

All of us, customers, sales people, marketing, customer service—everyone, daily face a number of converging forces which adversely impact our own and our organizations’ performances. Disruptive alternatives, changing the landscapes of our traditional markets and competition arise every day.

Face-to-face 51

Face-to-face Networking ACT Ideal Customer Profile 51

Klozers

JUNE 5, 2014

The recent increase in the number of Online Reputation Management companies validates this, however smart companies have learned some simple strategies and techniques on how to deal with the Customers From Hell, and try to catch them before the problem escalates, let alone they post anything negative online.

Ideal Customer Profile 50

Ideal Customer Profile Customer Social Media CRM 50

Sales Hacker

JUNE 23, 2020

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Leah Chaney , the Chief Experience Officer for BetterGrowth, a customer support agency she founded. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Sam Jacobs: Hey everybody, welcome to the Sales Hacker Podcast. Sales teams have had to quickly adapt to a new normal.

Customer 73

Customer Churn Lead Rank Scale 73

Sales Hacker

JUNE 16, 2020

This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky , an internationally recognized thought leader known as the disaster avoidance. His cutting edge thought leadership has been featured in over 550 articles and 450 interviews in the likes of Fast Company, CBS News, and Time. Subscribe to the Sales Hacker Podcast.

Government 99

Government Call-back Real Estate Face-to-face 99

Sales Hacker

JULY 16, 2020

Smart companies, and sales professionals, are leveraging their integration ecosystems to create more sales deals and attract higher valuations. Notice this part of the Axios article: “The two companies first began talking prior to the pandemic, although that was more about a partnership than an acquisition.”.

Top of Funnel 100

Top of Funnel Pipeline Scale Funnel 100

DiscoverOrg Sales

AUGUST 24, 2017

Each acronym provides the building block at a company’s inception to describe their mission statement, target market, and product. Sales and marketing departments live and die by their ability to grasp these concepts, and a company’s success hinges an identifying the target market within each audience.

B2B 186

B2B B2C Buyer Persona Social Media 186