Secrets for actionable salesforce.com pipeline success

Just yesterday, I watched a webinar talking about the secrets of funnel management and what sales metrics will give you the best insight into your actual sales activity and potential.

Let’s talk about this because finding the best path for actionable success is always important and even more so in a tight economy.

Ken Rudin, founder and vp of market development of LucidEra, tells his clients that to increase sales and decrease the sales cycle, the secret is to focus on the deals your company (and its individual sales reps) are most likely to win based on historical data.  More specifically, what are the characteristics of the deals that your individual sales reps are best able to close (and it may vary across reps).

Let’s first look at some of the metrics that will help you determine the best actionable path and then at how Salesforce.com can help you get there...

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8 Salesforce.com marketing automation tips

Picture this.  Your company is small- to medium-sized with a marketing budget to match.  The economy is stinkaroo and your company big cheeses have told you to keep up the lead generation efforts – and even gen more leads – at the same or less budget.

One of the things I love about Salesforce.com is how readily you can automate your marketing efforts -- and you don't have to be big to do it.  Via Salesforce, you can:

  • Automate lead data entry and follow up.
  • Determine what activities are contributing to your pipeline.
  • Determine your marketing ROI.
  • Provide consistent branding and messaging for your sales teams.
  • Make your company look bigger.

Let’s talk about some marketing automation tips and best practices for lead management.  This is kind of a list day for me so here are quick hits...

 

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Speaking of the cumulative power of blogging

Just two weeks ago, I blogged about the real value of B2B blogging and today I want to revisit the topic after seeing an interesting phenomenon in one of my blogs.

It’s one of my personal blogs but it still illustrates a point.  See, in the blog in question (not this one!), I’ve been stacked up this week and failed to post.  Imagine my surprise, though, to pop into my web statistics and discover a great week of visitations anyway.

Here's why...

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Bring back the love – advertiser vs consumer

Community Network’s normal stomping ground is the B2B arena but the video included in this article shines such a bright light on the misalignment that’s occurring between companies (advertisers) and consumers in many of today’s companies.

What the video highlights is just as relevant for the B2B market as it is for the B2C.  Check it out and see how much it resonates with you.

If by the end, you’re feeling like Claire Coffee, then you’ve got an intuitive understanding, if not a literal one, of what it means to want a good customer experience….that delightful sense of company/customer participation that extends beyond customer centricity.

The videos’ originator is bringbackthelove.com.

And now, Bring Back The Love videos…...

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