Category: Sales and Marketing

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Blog Sales and Marketing Sales Enablement Sales Management Sales Process

Service Level Agreement (SLA): Critical For Streamlined Sales And Marketing Alignment

If you’ve been following this blog, you already know that I believe alignment between an organization’s sales and marketing departments is critical. However, did you know that the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is an important way to achieve that alignment? The SLA is THE document that builds trust and accountability between sales and marketing departments. It’s going through the act of building the SLA and readdressing the SLA every month in a meeting that builds the foundation for sales and marketing alignment.

Unfortunately, only 43% of marketing and sales operations leaders have lead response SLAs in place, and most are not being governed. And only 11 percent of survey respondents reported having jointly managed SLAs according to SiriusDecisions.

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Blog Sales and Marketing Social Selling

9 Reasons Misalignment Is Detrimental To Your Social Selling Efforts

9 Reasons Misalignment Is Detrimental To Your Social Selling EffortsAttention both departments on the revenue-generating team. Can you identify the single biggest problem in your department? The correct answer: sales and marketing are misaligned.

If that wasn’t your response, you’re not alone. According to SiriusDecisions, 58% of marketing and sales operations leaders rated their sales and marketing operations alignment as “poor.” In fact, most people don’t believe this is true or that this misalignment exists. However, it’s a huge issue for many organizations, and this misalignment is negatively affecting your success. Without proper alignment, you cannot achieve Social Selling.

But how do you know if these two departments are misaligned? Here are nine ways that you can quickly identify a disconnection between sales and marketing.

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Blog Digital Transformation Marketing Management Sales and Marketing Sales Management

7 Key Priorities For Sales And Marketing In 2016

7 Key Priorities For Sales And Marketing In 2016What are you working on right now? If more people asked themselves that question (and answered honestly), 2016 would be the dawn of a much better world. More than $350 billion evaporated in 2015 due to poor productivity. Commit to working smarter in the new year to recover some of that lost revenue.

Steven Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, advised, “The key is not to prioritize your schedule but to schedule your priorities.” Step one is knowing what those priorities are. Here are the top priorities for B2B sales and marketing teams, culled from a host of recent surveys. Keep these goals handy throughout the coming year, and check off them off as you knock them down.

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Blog Content Marketing Digital Selling Digital Transformation Sales and Marketing Sales Enablement Sales Management Sales Process

Marketing vs. Sales Enablement: Who Fosters Digital Transformation?

Marketing VS Sales Enablement

“Marketing is absolutely the place to drive this transformation [in sales]… If you don’t have a corporate strategy around social media and social selling, and if you don’t proactively build that strategy collectively with sales, then however many number of sales people you have is however many strategies you have. It’s completely intersected.” –Bryan Jones, VP Commercial Marketing at Dell

I recently read this quote from Bryan Jones, VP Commercial Marketing at Dell. I both agree and disagree with Bryan. Here’s why.

In world-class organizations, digital transformation is the role of the sales enablement department. Sales enablement is part of the Revenue Generating team, which includes sales operations, sales, and marketing. Great sales enablement teams connect these commercial departments, and act as the bridge between the VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing.

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Blog Infographics Sales and Marketing

Evolve Or Die: The Rise Of The Sales Consultant [Infographic]

B2B buyers complete 57% of the buying decision before they are willing to talk to a sales professional. If you’re in the sales space then you’re no stranger to this defining statistic. To disrupt, challenge and impact your buyers earlier in their process, you must engage them in a valuable way. Providing commercial insights is the way to go.

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Blog Content Marketing Sales and Marketing Sales Management

The New Role Of Sales: 3 Surprising Skills You’ll Need To Succeed

Before I discuss the future, let’s look back at how the role of sales professionals has evolved. When I founded Sales for Life on January 1, 2010, I intended to take all of the Sales 2.0 best practices (such as cold calling and inside sales best practices) and coach local Toronto businesses on how to build SDR and ADR inside sales teams. At that time, I had just been exposed to marketing automation, live chat, inbound lead notification tools, and auto-dialers—and was confident that was the absolute future of selling.

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