Our Blog

Blogging takes on many forms and has grown to be more than just a way of expressing thoughts. Blogging is still a relatively new form of media but has reached new heights over its roughly twenty years of existence. Initially, the concept of blogs was similar to an online diary, but now people have taken it from posting personal ideas to boosting company exposure.

So, everyone is using and/or moving towards the use of digital content marketing, but the success of this relatively new practice is highly variable, and many companies are missing the mark in specific areas. Making wins with content is conceptually very easy, it’s the creation that gets complicated. This week we’ll examine how to create content that is tailored to buyers at different stages of the sales funnel for an optimized sales process with a real sales enablement solution.

So you’ve secured a business. You’ve gotten that client to finally say "Yes, I am ready to buy". How exhilarated must you feel? All your hard work paid off. But before you close-off the sales process and spend your commission, remember that the sale only consummates the relationship, and the buyer’s relationship hasn't come close to ending. Are you stuck thinking; what now? Your CRM system holds the answer.

If you’re reading this and thinking “My CRM system won’t tell me that”, then not only is your CRM system being underutilized, your company is at risk of being a laggard of CRM integration.

Sales and Marketing are two teams in business that have seen an explosion of sales enablement technologies, everything from the heavy adoption of CRM systems and marketing automation, to social media, mobile devices, and ubiquitous internet connectivity.

Unfortunately, most are coming to realize that the state of the sales rep is in a continued state of decline, and the role of marketing is in a paradigm shift that, for now, is only making things worse.

The balance of buyer-seller power is tipping favourably towards the buyer, and trends aren’t showing signs of slowing. The solution to the challenges already exists, and though implementation can vary across industries, a turn-key solution may be a click away.

“Can’t you just show me on my iPhone?”

We all know what buyers want, they want solutions that help them achieve their strategic objectives, and no nonsense. If you can come to a buyer, deliver a solution which provides measurable ROI or achieves objectives, and earn trust, you’ve got a winning proposition for closure.

The issue is that the sales process, one oriented in earning trust and developing relationships, is losing ground to technology that empowers the buyer and fragments the communications market. The art of being conversational and understanding the buyer is lost in the fog of unknown buyer preferences and difficult to reach buyer mediums.

The walking-brochure sales rep is seeing a dramatic, and highly undesirable, reestablishment, not by choice, but by virtue of a tipping balance of buyer-seller power in the conversational relationship.

The concept of the trust based relationship sales orientation is well established in sales. Old time strategies like pressure selling or canned selling have absolutely no relevancy. The trust based seller is consultative, and wants to help the buyer achieve their strategic priorities through the sales process.

Technology has exploded and given way to sales acceleration through various types of sales rep software, CRM systems, and etc. but something isn’t clicking. The state of the sales rep is in a continued trend of decline, and even with more time spent on sales preparation activities, the buyer is less satisfied than ever.

This begs the question; is the issue somewhere in the process? Or is there just a lack in real sales enablement software.

The New Year has arrived and it’s time to round up the hottest trends in sales and marketing for 2015. This year, sales reps and marketers will gain the benefits of establishing deeper connections with customers through the following 4 trends:

1. Mobile Sales Enablement is going to change the way organizations do business

Sales Call remains to be the most traditional way of engaging with customers; this is why Mobile Sales Enablement adoption is growing at a rapid rate. Purchases made by tablets rose 48% year over year in the second quarter to $8 billion, which is three times faster than purchases made at a desktop computer, according to Business Insider. 2015 will see this number continue to rise as sales reps realize that Mobile Sales Enablement provides the best way to present solutions to customers. To stay on top of this trend, sales execs will have to adopt tablets if they want to increase sales team performance.

As hard as it might be for some of us old-timers to believe, 2015 represents the exact 30-year mark referenced in Back to the Future Part II.  Makes you feel old, doesn’t it?  

The concept of time, beyond Hollywood's interpretations of traveling through it, is a core currency among modern B2B marketers and sellers: product developers are under constant pressure to reduce speed-to-market. Marketers are tasked with refreshing – and controlling – the brand more frequently than ever before, and delivering more quality leads, and faster than a DeLorean. Sales leaders are pulled in a million directions, and never have enough space on their calendar to ride along with their reps in order to provide proper coaching. Reps themselves are now required to act like micro-marketers, adding the stress of delivering the right message, at the right time, to the right person, to their already-metered selling time. And even clients are required to become smarter buyers, distilling terabytes of user-generated and Googled data into just-in-time, lean purchasing behaviors that minimize face time with traditional B2B sales reps who cherish that 1:1 encounter more than anything else.

A Marketing Automation platform, MAP, is a tool that allows marketers to reach potential customers at a faster rate while gathering more measurable results to refine future campaigns.