There’s no catch-all formula to guarantee success of a new sales hire. But in successful companies I’ve helped, you do spot patterns. The ones that get traction are willing to undergo the pain of change. They set outcome-based targets when they start hiring sales people, so both the company and the new hire know what […]
Sales and Marketing Integration
Let’s get rejected. Build sales with content strategy
August 13, 2016I recently attended the Unbounce CTA Conference in Vancouver, where Aaron Orendorff of iconiContent made a brilliant presentation entitled Let’s Get Rejected: 3 Counter-Intuitive Tactics for Successful & Brand Defining-Content. It touched on the right way to build sales with content strategy. I’ve often touched on integrating sales and marketing here and I just felt […]
Contact marketing and getting back to basics
May 30, 2016I was trying out a new audio book called ‘How to Get a Meeting with Anyone’ by Stu Heineke. It’s a quick, fun volume, on getting past the gatekeepers (a perennial sales problem) – but the further I got into it, the more I had a feeling akin to déjà vu. The meat of the […]
Crowdfunding to Find Customers and Get Instant Sales
May 28, 2015Crowdfunding for entrepreneurs? Most people probably associate crowdfunding with earnest folks raising money for charitable causes, or artists looking to fund their 10-minute animated short film as a passion project. Most people still don’t see the possibilities here for firms to massively boost the value of their sales and marketing efforts. It’s one topic that […]
I had an absolutely amazing time at the Digital Strategy Conference happening in Vancouver last week – and I’m pleased to see some very positive feedback about my presentation of an Erickson Coaching International Case Study: Applying true Click to Close Strategy (You can find some of that feedback on Twitter). We looked closely at […]
Selling to an International Market
April 23, 2015Want to succeed in the global marketplace? There’s a world of opportunity out there – but to succeed in selling to an international market, you’ve got to understand the culture. After I moved to Vancouver, I saws how sales and marketing people who start their careers in North America think. They know they can rely on […]
How to Stop Marketing Automation from Sabotaging Sales
January 20, 2015I was recently reviewing service websites for a client while doing competitive analysis for a sales strategy. In less than a minute of my checking out the first site, the phone rang – and it was the company calling to see if I wanted to buy their service: marketing automation at work! This happened three […]
The Difference Between CRM and Sales Force Automation
December 26, 2014A big part of my work as a sales and marketing integration consultant is helping firms to implement and get the most out of Customer Relationship Management software and Sales Force Automation. The first part of the job? Helping the client understand that they’re not the same thing. It’s easy to make that mistake when […]
The Strategy for Selling to Millennials
December 19, 2014Millennials are already on the radar of many firms looking to not only boost sales in the short term, but create customers for life. But selling to millennials is not simple. In the West at least, it’s the first generation that’s grown up in the Internet era. As one insightful “selling-to-Millennials” article in the Huffington […]
Integrating Sales and Marketing for Your Business. Part 2
November 27, 2014Earlier, I wrote about how companies need to integrate sales and marketing. It’s completely inefficient to have these two departments that don’t talk to each other. Integrating sales and marketing isn’t a snap — and for most companies, these departments just talk past each other. If they ever did talk, this is what that a […]