Using Inbound Marketing to realize the full potential of your sales team
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Anyone who has been part of a Business-to-Business (B2B)By Mark Gibson on Fri, Jul 30, 2010
White Paper Executive Summary
Anyone who has been part of a Business-to-Business (B2B)By Mark Gibson on Tue, Jun 22, 2010
I loved Seth Godin's latest book Linchpin, but Linchpin is not for everyone. There is a certain percentage of the population that doesn't want change; hates the concept of personal development - especially when it comes to them, is not interested in new ideas and prefers to pretend like Candide in Voltaire's novel by the same name that - "all must really be for the best and that hard work, from day to day is what life is about."
By Mark Gibson on Sun, Jun 13, 2010
The Magic Software Case Study has been moved to Sales And Marketing Performance Improvement Case Studies
By Mark Gibson on Wed, Apr 07, 2010
Tonight I watched the quarter final of the UEFA European Champions League to see my favorite football (soccer) team FC Barcelona play Arsenal. I have written two prior blog posts on the way FC Barcelona goes about professional training and development of players, plays football and approaches playing and winning the game.
By Robin Russell on Fri, Feb 26, 2010
In a conversation with Nic Brisbourne, investment partner at Esprit Capital Ventures in London last week, we concluded that the principal factors causing underachievement are generally people, not product related and the root cause is nearly always poor sales and marketing execution.
In hindsight CEO’s will generally agree that they should have made changes earlier and knowing what they know now, can tell you what they would have done differently.
But what if entrepreneurs had a method or set of best-practices that were proven to create early sales and marketing success in both startups and new product introductions in high-tech companies…would this change the odds of survival and over/underachievement and the value of the company on exit?
I believe it would and am currently reading and absorbing the wisdom and knowledge captured in Steven Gary Blank’s “The Four Steps to the Epiphany”, subtitled "successful strategies for products that win", a book about building successful high-tech companies.
Blank is better known in the US than in Europe, having started 8 companies in CEO or Marketing roles, five of which were IPO’s including names you may remember: E.piphany an enterprise software company, Ardent a Supercomputer company, two semiconductor companies MIPS Computers and Zilog and according to Blank, three very deep craters.
Blank teaches entrepreneurship and Customer Development at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, in the Colombia/Berkeley MBA program and at Stanford University at the Graduate School of Engineering.
Customer Validation creates a repeatable sales and marketing road map based on the lessons learned in selling (not giving it away) to the first early customers.
These first two steps validate the assumptions in your business model, that a market exists for your product, who your customers will be, the target buyers, establishes pricing, sales process and channels strategy.
Customer creation builds on early sales success and after completion of Customer Validation. Blank states that customer creation is dependent on the market entry type which is governed by the nature of the product - is it a disruptive innovation or a me-too.
Customer Creation strategies define the four types of start-up
* Startups entering an existing market
* Startups that are creating an entirely new market
* Startups wanting to resegment an existing market as a low cost entrant
* Startups that want to resegment an existing market as a niche player
Company building is where the company transitions from its informal learning and discovery oriented Customer Development team into formal sales, marketing and business development teams to exploit the company's early success.
If you are an entrepreneur or a sales, marketing or business development leader responsible for introducing new products or services, then this book is a must read.
If you click on the book cover above it will take you to Amazon.com where you can order it.
If you are interested in the history of Silicon Valley and the birth of the modern venture capital business, you could watch Steve Blank's one hour video on The Secret History of Silicon Valley...its fascinating and a great presentation.
If you are interested in startup best practice, you could join the lean startup circle group on Linkedin. If you are interested in more ideas on building companies and successful product introductions, you could read the following blogs;
By Mark Gibson on Tue, Jan 12, 2010
Clarity in Internet, marketing and sales messaging is a topic we have been writing about for the past five years as it critical in creating marketing messages for B2B technology companies that resonate with buyers and help them get found on the Internet.
By Mark Gibson on Tue, Dec 22, 2009
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to my friends colleagues and fellow group members.
By Mark Gibson on Wed, Dec 16, 2009
By Mark Gibson on Mon, Sep 28, 2009
I was explaining our sales training approach (which is based on improving communication, language and inter-personal skills and applying these skills in selling situations) to a corporate sales training professional recently, who made a comment to which I took exception.
He said, “Yes, well of course that’s soft skills training, and we are not planning on doing any of that. We offer it for our management team, but our sales training is focused on product training, overcoming objections, negotiating and closing the sale and we are currently implementing the TAS methodology and training.” The implication here is that soft skills are touchy-feely and somehow optional or nice to have, or something that sales people are born with....not the hard skills sales people to need to crunch deals and close hard. Needless to say it was a short meeting.
According to Wikipedia: Soft skills is a sociological term relating to a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people.
I continued to consider what the training buyer had said, because it called into question our recent experience and the sales performance improvement methodology we had developed. I began to analyze the selling process and dissect its elements and offer the following insights.
Selling is a craft or skill that can be entered as a profession at a minimum by anyone with the ability to use a telephone. The craft of selling is innate in some individuals with highly developed interpersonal skills and intellect, - these people (about 5%-10% of the sales population) are known as naturals. For the rest of us, selling is a skill that is learned both by doing it and through training, - and with practice and coaching it can be mastered.
The B2B selling profession is underpinned by process (this resembles a science) where every move and transition in the selling cycle is captured and as such can be analyzed and optimized. Selling methodologies and CRM however will not help salespeople engage buyers, diagnose needs and qualify if capabilities are relevant, which to my mind are the highest order elements in the whole sales cycle.
By Mark Gibson on Wed, Aug 19, 2009
The following is a true story extracted from a recent call in a company, possibly just like yours.
Julie, a sales rep from ABC Software, just got back from an initial meeting with a prospective client who registered interest in your products on your Website. Your inside sales team spoke with the prospect and qualified interest in a meeting to discuss ABC application usage in Acme. Julie's Sales Manager, Bob, asks "So how did the Acme meeting go?"