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Trade show value, attendance, and most interestingly, first-time only visits, are rising steadily. Many KPIs have now exceeded 10-year highs not seen since 2006. 'Netflix’ization' of the buyer decision journey is steadily conditioning trade show attendees, and exhibitors share mixed views on best practices.

Today we expand on our previous post about trade show trends, and share some best practices for lead generation while attending a trade show.

Marketing concepts have come a long way in recent years. Today, customers have shut off the traditional world of marketing by fast-forwarding through television commercials and becoming immune to advertisement banners online (Source: Content Marketing Institute, 2015). Buyers no longer want to hear what marketers have to say. As a result, marketers have been forced to turn to  different tactics in an effort to get buyers to listen to their messages.

Last week, I took an introductory look at buyer personas and how to create them. This week, I expand on how to effectively use these personas. In case you missed it, you can find my post, “what is a buyer persona and how does it influence digital content”, by clicking here.

Sales training is big business. Every company participates in it, and many new and intuitive ways of training Reps have popped up over the last decade or two, but something isn’t working. The state of the Sales Rep is in a continued decline, the humble sales presentation is losing effectiveness, and buyers are starting to find Sales Reps less and less meaningful to the sales process.

Today we examine where and why Sales training is and is not effective, and how to rebalance the scales of buyer-seller relationships in the face of declining motivation, and greater investment in training.

Sales forecasting, discovering trends and aligning sales and marketing are just some of the reasons why leading sales organizations use analytics. Companies are consistently working on extracting data from the sales pipeline in order to increase win rates and shorten the sales cycle. Yet, even though data-rich analytics work to track key sales activities, sales execs are still lacking the necessary insights needed to improve the sales process. The question becomes: why, among all the information that’s available through sales analytics, are companies still not achieving growth? 

In today’s environment, when buyers are inundated with thousands of offers, it can come as no surprise that buyers are reluctant to meet with potential sellers. One of the main reasons for their caution is that many salespeople fail to adequately research the buyer’s position and needs. With the right approach and with the help of sales analytics software, you can differentiate yourself from the pack. Here are three traps to watch out for—and three ways to defeat them.