Sales Driven Marketing Hub

Reader Q&A:

I would venture to guess that every one of us has at least one prospect that's dragging their feet. They like what you have to offer, but they just won't pull the trigger.

Share your best practices for creating urgency. How do you get prospects off the fence and get them to buy now? Join the conversation on Google Plus.

BEST PRACTICES CONTEST: Share your best ideas, and I'll publish my favorite comments on a follow-up post (11 Tips for Closing New Business) with links back to your site and/or profile. Winner(s) get the spotlight across my entire social network!

Early in my career I remember waiting outside a conference room where a potential customer's team gathered to hear my presentation. At that moment, my competitor was in the conference room making their pitch. I was completely confident in my offer, because I knew I had the better product.

Fifteen minutes before my presentation, the door to the conference room opened, and out walked my competitor. He pulled me aside and offered me his condolences. He was sure that as I matured as a salesperson, I would understand how and why I had already lost the deal.

This quick story represents a perfect parallel. If the bear and the wolf can hunt together, so must Marketing and Sales...

Photographer Lassi Rautiainen captured the profound partnership between a she-wolf and a brown bear in the wilds of northern Finland. For days, he witnessed the strange pair meet every evening to share food after a hard day of hunting. No one knows when or how this relationship was formed, “but it is certain that by now each of them needs the other.”

What can leadership do when the team is suffering from "Shiny Objects Syndrome"? It isn't that the last 10 ideas weren't any good, it's more about lack of planning, strategy, and execution. Taking time to think through your plan sets the stage for success, builds credibility, and creates buy-in with your team.

Here's a list of seven questions that will help you activate alignment between marketing, sales, and sales operations... 

Companies that set out to change the game, do 10 things better than everyone else…

1. They build a marketing and lead generation strategy that changes conversations from, “I’ve never heard of you,” to “I’m a part of your online community. I see you guys everywhere on social, and I was doing a search for companies who can help us with A, B, and C… and I found you on the front page of Google.”

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves. -Steve Jobs

Always give people more than what they expect to get. -Nelson Boswell

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends. -Walt Disney

Motivating your sales team isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be. It’s a question of how effective you are at executing on these five things:

1. Interested Prospects

Who do you think is more excited about going to work in the morning, the rep who has to make 100+ phone calls just to get one appointment or the rep who can get one new appointment for every 25 calls? Hunters naturally love prospecting, and they love it even more when you supplement their efforts with consistent, high quality lead flow.

How can you maintain top performance every single day? Dr. Alan Watkins describes the difference between feelings and emotions… and how control under pressure impacts your ability to consistently perform at your best...

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?"