Sales Driven Marketing Hub

You can say cold calling is dead, and it might be for those who work for a corporate marketing machine… but most sales people work for companies that generate little to no new leads, and if they don’t get to prospecting, they’ll look like this guy...

The best business leaders recognize when a sales team is getting a low ROE, Return On Effort. They don’t get hard headed about trying to chop down a redwood with a dull ax, “Welcome to the team, here’s a list of 600 names and numbers, I don't care how long it takes, go get some appointments.”

I was recently visiting with a prospective client, talking about lead generation and conversion strategies.

Of course, the sales team heard about the meeting, and they're excited about the prospect of receiving qualified leads on a consistent basis.

One of them asked me, "If we do inbound marketing... does that mean we don't have to cold call anymore?"

Prospects don't answer the phone anymore and they rarely respond to emails. Everyone talks about adding value, but the question is... how? How do sales reps take the time to add value when their manager is constantly on them about getting on the phone, logging activities in Salesforce, and building a stronger pipeline?

The answer is... ALIGNMENT... between sales and marketing to develop a strategic value driven approach to sales prospecting.

Sales has to stop complaining about not having enough marketing, and Marketing has to stop complaining about Sales not using the multitude of makeketing peices "hidden in Uncle Charlie's Garage," A.K.A. Sharepoint.

"Influence is the currency of the social web."

-Joe Fernandez, CEO of Klout

Got Klout?

Several tech-forward marketing companies are going where few have gone before: they're ditching the résumé and the conventional job interview process for tweets.

Are your social media marketing efforts generating mixed results? I've seen some marketers drive tons for traffic from LinkedIn and almost no traffic from Facebook... ask the next guy, and their results are the complete opposite.

Maybe you should be following a similar success principle to, "know your audience," in this case, know your network:

Sometimes we get in too big of a hurry trying to push our prospects into a decision... "yes" or "no". A recent post at Digiday captured my attention. It paints a picture of how great marketers think. It's more than just "now" that matters...