Best time to ask for an order is Friday afternoon. “Who’s not in a good mood at the end of the week?,” he says. So he calls all his pending quotes and asks for the order then. Best time to ask for an appointment for the next week: Thursday afternoon. Advice from a pro. Now go after it, and good selling!
Posts Tagged ‘Sales’
A sales client of mine shared some tips with me:
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010"Marketing Budget Survey — How To Prioritize, Where are the Best Leads?"
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010View presentation: http://tinyurl.com/ykajrfp
52% of B2B Marketers Say Lead Generation is Their #1 Problem
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010According to a study by SiriusDecisions, 52% of B2B marketers say lead generation is their #1 problem. As an agency specializing in both online and traditional lead generation campaigns, that’s nice to hear.
But when you talk to them, they’re actually struggling something entirely different. Almost without exception, when you talk to marketing VPs about what they’re really trying to solve, it has nothing to do with generating more leads or even improving the quality of the leads they generate:
- “I don’t know what happens to the leads I give the sales force.”
- “I can’t tell what sources generate the best quality leads.”
- “My salespeople/my channel don’t follow up on the leads I give them.”
- “My salespeople want all the leads in their territories, but there’s really too many for them to pursue.”
- “My CRM system doesn’t work.”
- “My conversion rates of leads to opportunities is inconsistent/too low.”
When I meet with sales and marketing VPs at companies both large and small, they are plagued with sales and marketing integration issues. More than anything, sales process issues, and the handoff of leads from marketing to sales, is the paramount challenge B2B companies face today, and their recession has only exacerbated that problem. It’s not that we don’t have enough leads; in truth, we’re just not doing a good job of finding the diamonds in the rough, converting them to opportunities, managing the process, and tracking the results, so we know what works and what doesn’t. Seems simple. And some of us even admit it, according to the SiriusDecisions report, where 10% of marketers did in fact admit that “sales process issues” were their #1 concern. So now that the emperor’s lack of clothes has been revealed, that creating more leads and more leads isn’t the ultimate objective, what to do? Three steps:
1. Conduct detailed sales process interviews with both customers and salespeople to uncover how the process is working, and identify gaps
2. Re-engineer the process in collaborative sessions with sales and marketing decision-makers
3. Install/retrain/re-engineer marketing automation and CRM systems in order to accurately track and report back on lead generation and sales conversion activities.
I didn’t say three simple steps. This is hard work, which is why so few companies really solve it. It’s not a question of lead flow, or technology, talent, personalities or boundary issues between sales and marketing. It’s all of the above. Get to work.
NEOSA Sales & Marketing SIG – Virtual Selling
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009September 17, 2009
7:30 am – 9:00 am
The use of the Internet as a method of selling is increasing every day. Business-to-business vendors have discovered that Web based selling, sales force automation tools and a customer relationship management organizational method can be used to increase the effectiveness of their sales force.
The use of these tools today pales in comparison to the proposed uses of the model in the future. Deciding what is reality and what can be accomplished in a virtual environment will be crucial to the survival and success of sales organizations in the future.
The session is a prediction of how sales activities will be conducted in the virtual organization world of tomorrow.
Our presenter is Joel Goldstein, Founder and CEO of the Goldstein Group. Founded in 1992, The Goldstein Group is a premier b-to-b technology agency. The firm today provides marketing strategy, PR, email and Internet marketing, advertising and direct marketing programs. It distributes more than 1.5 million email marketing messages annually, making it one of Northeast Ohio’s largest e-marketing agencies.
Joel Goldstein is a seasoned expert in corporate and marketing communications programs whose career includes BFGoodrich, Gould, Glidden, Keithley Instruments, Danaher Corporation, and others. Goldstein is a member of Crain’s “Who’s Who In Technology,” is a past president of Public Relations Society of America (Akron), incoming president of the Greater Cleveland Chapter of PRSA, and also served as President of the Cleveland Chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization.
Agenda:
7:30 – 8:00 a.m. – Registration, Breakfast, Networking
8:00 – 9:00 a.m. – Panel Discussion/Q&A
For more information visit:
http://cose.org/en/Events/Listings/NEOSA/9-17-09.aspx?Date=9/17/2009&axAuth=00000034
Take the Sales and Marketing Survey!
Thursday, July 16th, 2009  Dear Colleague: May we have your help on an important project? We’d like to invite you to participate in a Your opinions are crucial to the success of this project, which pertains to sales and marketing. This survey is designed to be concise and easy to fill out; therefore, it should take no more Your opinion counts, so please take the next few minutes to let us know your views. Sincerely, Joel Goldstein |
