Archive for 'Blog'

There’s no reason you can’t evaluate your email marketing efforts alongside your other lead-generation tactics. This includes display ads, cold calling, direct mail, etc. But before you can effectively compare tactics, you need to gather actual and target campaign metrics. These metrics serve as the baseline for your tactical evaluations. (more…)

For B2B companies to grow, their marketing organizations need to grow up

By Maryanne Hancock, Rodger Boehm, Candace Lun Plotkin

If B2B companies are serious about growth, it’s time they got serious about their marketing. Marketing needs to take on the challenge of becoming a growth engine for companies. That means CMOs have to step up and lead.

The trends that are rocking B2C companies are just as relevant to the B2B world: multiplying customer touch points, changing customer behaviors, massive floods of big data. And like their B2C counterparts, B2B companies need to put the customer at the center of everything they do. (more…)

It’s natural for salespeople to want to be nice to their customers. But in business-to-business sales, where the stakes are high and customers are increasingly more sophisticated and risk-averse, being nice just doesn’t cut it. To be successful today, nice guys must challenge their customers out of their comfort zones and focus on delivering value.

To understand what makes top-performing sales representatives successful, Corporate Executive Board conducted a survey of more than 6,000 sales representatives across the globe and numerous industries. We identified five profile types that B2B sales reps fall into, based on the survey analysis: (more…)