B2B Lead Generation Articles

• Question #4: Calculating the ROI of Social Media
  The Innovative Marketer | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  Derick, Stefani, Andrea and a least a dozen others asked questions which I can best summarize as "How do you calculate the ROI of social media?" I'm hoping that you asked these questions, before I did my little spiel on...
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• Q&A from the B2B Magazine Social Media Webinar with David Meerman Scott
  The Innovative Marketer | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  David Meerman Scott and I went over time on our B2B Magazine Webinar on social media and agreed that we'd handle Q&A on this blog (and perhaps over on David's as well). I consolidated some of the 50+ questions we...
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• Trendsurfing on That Marketing Show
  The Innovative Marketer | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  Spoke with Rodger Roeser of That Marketing Show recently about Web 2.0 marketing tactics, measurement and Digital Body Language. The show's online now. Check it out here.
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• A click is not currency
  The Innovative Marketer | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  Oh, the coveted click. It’s traditionally been considered the Holy Grail of the Internet, and marketers have spent millions in search of clicks. Google made billions by providing them. The legendary dot-com bubble was fueled by an ever ballooning belief...
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• Everybody talks about measuring social media, but nobody is doing anything ab...
  The Innovative Marketer | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  I'm at the CMO Club conference in San Francisco this week, and while the audience of 80 texted "Doing more with less" as the number one issue facing marketers in 2010, the real buzz around the show seems to be ROI of social media. Blake Cahill had a post over on VisInsights on the value of social media for B2B companies (he's doing a webcast with Sirius Decisions' Jonathan Block) and one of his lines stopped me:
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• 10 Great Marketing Podcasts you Should Not Miss
  The Innovative Marketer | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  Before doing some spring gardening this weekend, I loaded up the ol' iPod with a bunch of recent marketing-related Podcasts. Podcasts, you recall, were the world-changing, paradigm-shifting phenomena of four years ago, kind of like Twitter is today. My day...
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• 5 Ways to Ensure your Sales Training Program Won’t Succeed
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  Third in a 3 part series on sales training theory The first two articles in this series addressed business processes that must be in place before you consider sales training as a solution, and the value of Bloom's Taxonomy as a training foundation. Today's post addresses how the training itself can go wrong, even if everything else is in place. Everyone that funds a sales training program wants it to succeed. But many times it doesn't. The biggest failure point results from lack of ongoing reinforcement of the principles learned in the training class. But there are other failure points, too, and we've heard several of them that are the ones most often voiced among inside sales execs, managers, and reps. Here are 5 of the most common: 1) Lack of a plan to ensure ongoing reinforcement o...
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• Speed interviewing: is this dodgy hiring technique based on speed-dating?
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  This blog was begun as a way to share some of the best practices in inside sales techniques that we discuss in my telesales training courses, but has evolved to encompass inside sales management techniques and practices as well. Last week's post on the concept of yearly commission checks prompted both blog responses and a number of telephone calls. One of the most interesting communications I've received about the whole process of interviewing came from Barbara, who emailed the following story about an uncomfortable interview experience she went through with a well-known high technology company. I'm reprinting it here because many inside sales executives and managers are readers of this blog, and I'm sure they'll want to avoid having interview candidates feel as badly about their compan...
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• Commission paid once per year? That’s a new one on me!
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  In my telesales training classes, reps tend to crab a bit sometimes about company policies. Often, these are about how Marketing could do a better job getting them leads, or how cumbersome the CRM is to use. I tell them that I've yet to see a company whose sales reps didn't have the same concerns, and these generally are the result of a red hot company growing real fast, fast enough to easily outgrow systems that would have been adequate if the company were not growing at all. In other words, hot companies have growth challenges, while failing companies don't. My recommendations are to do a better job with the leads you have, and leave the CRM headaches to someone else (I remember the days of keeping prospect info on 3x5 cards, so any CRM is a joy, compared with that). And, as just abou...
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• Price negotiation: when the prospect won’t buy today because your price is ...
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  Marianne is an inside sales rep who's just landed a telesales job selling high-end graphics tools to developers. Many of these folks are already customers, and her job is to upsell and cross sell. And she's dealing with people that really need those upgrades, but can't find the budget. So they tell her to call back next quarter. Today's post is about how to deal effectively with that issue. When I mentioned Marianne's dilemma to a friend, he told me that one of his sales colleagues from years past had countered the "I can't afford it" sales objection with "You know what, Bob? You can't afford NOT to have it." Then the sales rep would discuss the reasons why. My initial reaction was that this was just another cheesy closing line from the past, hackneyed enough that you wouldn't use it t...
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• World’s most challenging telesales environment? Bet you can’t top this!
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  Part of what makes delivering inside sales training courses interesting is discussing the tough challenges with which each team is faced. Sometimes the working environment itself is an issue, but if you think your working conditions are challenging, you'll love today's post. Last week I visited a client in Bangkok, and his office is near the corner of Rama IV and Silom roads. If you've been reading or seeing the world press reports, you've heard about the huge protests and Thai military deployment. This is all happening outside my client's door. On Thursday, three M79 grenades were launched from an adjacent area. All of them exploded, one of them no more than 100 feet from my client's front door. Those are tough working conditions! My client's building has been shuttered, the Sala Daen...
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• Critical Steps in training your in-house Inside Sales team
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  This week I’m delivering a presentation to the American Teleservices Association under the topic of Call Center Training: Trends, Techniques, and Tools. All of what I’ll be discussing comes directly from what I teach in my inside sales training courses' target='_self'>inside sales training courses, and it’s important enough that I’m including the ideas I’ll be discussing here in this week’s blog post.  It’s in outline form, but all of you Inside Sales Directors and Managers will find enough data in it to compare it with how you’re training your team now. This training process has made thousands of reps successful, so take a look:  You’ll want to train your inside sales team on the following 6 focus areas: 1) Pre-call research skills2) Contact skills3) Qualification and Questioning skill...
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• There are no be-backs: make it happen on the first call
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  I got a call this past week from a prospect that wants us to deliver an inside sales training course' target='_self'>inside sales training course, and one of his main challenges is that his reps aren’t always asking a closing questions when they have the opportunity, and he’s convinced that sales are being lost because of it. And they probably are, because if his reps aren’t asking closing questions, his competitors’ reps probably will.  I’ve always believed that you have to fully qualify on the first call, and close on the next step, too.  I learned this technique from Bob Tumbleson, so was my boss during the first sales job I ever had. This was an outside sales position, something of a misnomer, because we were at a sales office, and our prospects came in to see us. They visited us be...
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• 4 great techniques for selling in a “downâ€� economy
  Inside Sales Tips Blog | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  I got a call this week from a blog subscriber that desperately needed some tips for selling in a "down" economy. Now that summer's here, his prospects are ramping down in terms of their purchases. He's really feeling it at the end of the quarter, and wants to ensure he doesn't have the same situation at the end of the upcoming quarter as well. The philosophy I teach in my inside sales training courses has always been that you sell all year ‘round just the same as you would when things are tough. Great sales practices should be in place all the time. So here are four tips that are critically important right now. And once you do them consistently, you shouldn't have too many under-quota months: 1) Upsell and cross-sell to your current customers. Your customers already know you. You've d...
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• Sales Performance & Compensation Relationship in a Recession
  Idea Sellers | Jul 31, 2010 | Permalink
  There are two types of business owners: 1. Those who view their sales team as an asset. 2. Those who view their sales team as an expense. Type 2's do not understand the value and contribution of their salespeople. They...
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