According to a 2011 study by MarketingSherpa, 74% of B2B marketers stated that their biggest challenge was generating high quality leads.  The next biggest challenge was “generating a high volume of leads.”  This just highlights the fact that most B2B marketers have the wrong priorities.  Instead of focusing on generating poor quality leads that are a waste of your salespeoples’ time, they need to focus on helping salespeople sell.

I often find that most struggling sales people are resistant to dump a non-qualified prospect because they are afraid they are going to miss a sale or not make quota that month.  As a result, their pipeline gets blogged with time wasters and prospects that are not going to buy anytime soon.

If you are like most B2B companies, your website is all about selling your product or service.  However, if your website alone could really sell your product or service, then why do you need sales people?  Far too often, when I watch companies design their website they think it will do all the work for them.  In reality, that is not the case.  A website is a great sales support tool but it will not complete the sale in most B2B complex environments.

Ever wonder how “intelligent” your sales staff is? Are they really worth the money that you are paying them?  In the past, sales people were able to maintain tight control over their lead-management processes.  However, more and more customers in the B2B market space have come to rely on peer reviews and online research to learn about products, executives, and companies before they buy.  Social intelligence is becoming a crucial skill that all your sales staff needs to have in order to gain an edge over your competition.

Kim Kardashian was married to “some guy,” Kris Humphries, for a whopping 72 days after their lavish August 2011 wedding.  The two spent millions on their walk down the aisle and probably made bigger news when the reality star filed for divorce in October.  She then released a heartfelt note on her blog telling fans she shouldn't have rushed into marriage.  The same is true for many companies when sales (Kim) and Marketing (Kris) work together to gain alignment.  Sales is the big celebrity and, far too often, most people think of Marketing as an afterthought.  When this happens and they rush into the goal of aligning, just like Kim and Kris tried, it fails.

You’re a quarterback and you’re down by four points.  It’s fourth and goal at the nine-yard line with 10 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.  You need a touchdown for the win—you need a play.  So many variables come into your mind.  Do you have the right personnel on the field?  What players and formation does the opponent have on the field?  What play should you call?  This is when you rely on the playbook prepared with your coaching staff for this very point in the game, for this very situation.  Like a playbook to a quarterback, sales playbooks can provide the pivotal next move to a salesperson.  They can shorten sales cycles, increase win rates, ramp up new salespeople, increase deal sizes and optimize overall sales performance.  In other words, they help salespeople win.

Executing a lead-generation campaign without a universal lead definition wastes time, money and resources.  If you are in sales or marketing and you don’t have a ULD (Universal Lead Definition), then you need to read this.  But, don’t worry - you are not alone.  According to the Marketing Sherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, 61% of B2B marketers admit to sending “leads” directly to Sales without qualification.

If you were to ask most salespeople about the quality of the leads they get from marketing, they would probably tell you that they are suspects at best.  And of course that depends on what your definition of what a suspect is.  It’s important to start with a clear definition of exactly what defines a suspect, a prospect, and a lead.  The following article does just that, and also outlines how to move your suspect to a sales qualified opportunity.

According to CSO Insights, companies that adopt a ‘Dynamic Process’ experience 35% higher win rates than those that follow a ‘Random Process.’  Yes, that is correct 35%.  That is a very substantial number.  However, when you look at most company’s sales and lead generation programs, everything is very linear and very forced.  No wonder most companies have so many prospects falling out of their pipeline.

This is a very powerful question.  Imagine that you could predict how your customers will react to your next marketing campaign or product launch.  What if you could do that for all your marketing campaigns?