Lead nurturing has become an integral component of an overall marketing strategy. While there is an ever-growing incentive to implement an effective lead nurturing strategy with business partners and prospects, determining which specific tactics to utilize can prove challenging. more

Sandra Zoratti, vice-president of worldwide marketing of the soon-to-be-formed InfoPrint Solutions Company, a Ricoh/IBM joint venture, added interactive marketing to the InfoPrint Solutions Company marketing mix to multiply the reach of the sales force in pursuit of the coveted small and medium-sized business market. Here is an overview of Sandra's ... more

If you're like most marketers, you're probably struggling with the best ways to help your salespeople have more meaningful conversations with customers and prospects. Here are five quick tips for creating scripted conversations to help salespeople more effectively communicate your company's business value to customers and prospects. more

Selling is not so much about the features of our products or services—or even the benefits the customer receives. Rather, it is about our relationship with the customer. People do business with people they trust. more

In an era of increasing federal regulation and greater competition in the mutual fund market, a financial firm found itself needing to modernize its marketing efforts. Rydex Investments, a private company that sells funds and other financial products primarily to institutional investors, decided to try some new techniques to get ... more

Executives in every industry are demanding definitive results linking marketing spend to business impact, and tradeshows are no exception. Exhibit managers need solid data when selecting the right tradeshows for their companies. more

The customer development group at a large, publicly held high-tech company needed a central repository of data to help identify satisfied customers willing to be references when sales associates approached new prospects. By putting together a customer reference management database filled with relevant data on customers, the company was able to ... more

CEO "dashboards" can be a great way to shed light on customers and sales process performance and get feedback on how you as the CEO are performing your role. CEOs who want to know sooner what will be coming down the pike later will design a dashboard to track the following. more

How do you sell a niche product with a limited potential audience? Try an in depth-television infomercial. Professional Tool Manufacturing's infomercial for Drill Doctor, a drill-bit sharpening machine, is one of the longest-running infomercials in TV history. It has consistently driven retail sales—more than two million Drill Doctors have been ... more

Yet another responsibility has been added to the CEO's already considerable load.... Because we live in an increasingly complex world, and the sales organization is the most critical link to the customer, it should be the driving force. That's why the CEO must understand every aspect of the sales process—to ... more

For over a year, there's been lots of talk about Web 2.0. Whether hyped or not, there's definitely some meat to it. The Web is no longer static and one-way. Instead, visitors play a role. Users participate and connect to each other through services as opposed to visiting Web sites. ... more

A civil engineering firm with a tremendous reputation faced a major challenge: It had grown its business by repeat business and referrals, and now some of its best clients were beginning to retire. The company was losing market share. By implementing a "voice of the customer" survey and then creating marketing ... more

Dunderson, a Swedish manufacturer of high-end urban clothes, wanted to expand its clientele to the key US market. Since the vast majority of its business came from third-party retailers selling to European consumers, it had limited exposure to Americans—mostly through one retail outlet in New York City. At the same ... more

Several factors have dramatically altered the landscape of B2B marketing in recent years, forcing marketing practitioners to rethink their tactics and reinvest their resources to achieve superior outcomes. Here are the top challenges B2B marketing organizations now face, and how to address them. more

In his keynotes and recordings, world-class motivational speaker and sales trainer Zig Ziglar often talks about the importance of having meaningful, specific goals. And he'll drive home his point with the rhetorical question, "What would you rather be in life, a meaningful specific or a wandering generality?" As marketers and business ... more

Fast food consumers are rarely loyal—if they see a shorter line across the street, that's usually where they'll go. Accordingly, Miami Management—which owns 16 Wendy's franchises in Kentucky—implemented new technology that changes the drive-thru process by adding multiple lanes and a remote order center. The long-term payoff: quicker, more accurate ... more

Congratulations! The lead machine is up and running. Your marketing programs are bringing in new prospects and you're starting to have an impact on the revenue line. You have a bigger budget this quarter, and more target audiences to add to your list. The stakes just got higher. With untested ... more

Many business owners or CEOs have not taken the time to educate themselves about what marketing is, and what it should be doing for them. Sometimes, even those who have lack a good grasp on a good and accurate definition of marketing. Why does this happen? And what can we ... more

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The goal of lead generation is the creation of more selling opportunities. As a result, lead generation is a critical subset of a company's sales and marketing strategy, and it must be carefully managed to ensure that the sales team is in front of qualified buyers, selling and closing. more

These smartest and bravest professional service firms have discovered the risks and rewards of the client satisfaction survey done right. Here's how you can do the same. more

We've learned not to trust email to arrive safely in the recipient's inbox. So we leave voicemail asking whether the person received the email or the earlier voicemail. How much follow-up is too much? Where do you draw the line to avoid becoming a stalker or "that crazy person who keeps ... more

Though by no means cutting edge in the usual sense... scissors and related tools help drive the $30 billion craft and hobby industry. Fiskars Brands, Inc., a global brand based in the Netherlands with U.S. headquarters in Madison, WI, was losing sales of craft tools—including its famed specialized scissors—to commoditized, ... more

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When an online electronics retailer runs a holiday-season Google paid search campaign, and the resulting cost per acquisition is far higher than the average cost per order, something is not right. Yet that's what happened with the 2005 holiday campaign of The Source By Circuit City. The following year, Source flipped ... more