When it comes to manufacturing, Deere has a lot going on in the next couple years. They’ve announced six different sites that will be opening or expanding by 2013.

This year already, Deere & Co. broke ground in January 2012 on their second tractor factory in India. They will be investing $80 million to build the factory in Dewas and could add as many as 1,000 employees.

In October 2011, Deere & Co. announced it will invest $124 million to build two new factories in Brazil to supply growing demand for construction equipment in South America. The total cost of both is $180 million  and will co-own one with Hitachi Constructions Machinery Co. “Brazil is one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for construction equipment,” CEO Samuel Allen said. The plants could employ more than 600 people. Construction is expected to start this year and be up and running by 2013.

In addition, at the end of 2011, they announced plans to invest $32 million to expand its production capacity in Russia. “We believe Russia will continue benefiting from demographic and macroeconomic trends that require increased food production from global agriculture,” said Mark von Pentz, President of John Deere’s Agricultural & Turf Division. “Russia has the agronomical potential to become a pan-Eurasian breadbasket.”

Within the United States, Deere also announced in December 2011 that it is moving ahead with a $113 million expansion at its plant in Akeny, Iowa. They’d be crazy not to with almost $10 million in tax incentives for this project. Construction is set to begin in spring of 2012.

Lastly, in May 2011, Deere will be investing approximately $60 million to build a new factory in China. This is Deere’s sixth engine factory worldwide. Deere estimates that production will start in 2013.

Learn more about Deere, their other initiatives and projects, and who to contact with the new Deere Sample CRUSH Report that’s available. http://estore.salesquest.com/category/available-sample-reports

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
Trisha.ellis@salesquest.com

Fact: Driving new revenue requires introducing your products and services to new decision makers.

Problem: To accomplish this, many companies set up ‘burn-out’ cold calling environments for their sales people with unrealistic goals based on what they hope to drive vs. the actual demand for the product or service.

Top Ten Reasons Why this Cold Calling Environment Does Not Work:

#10 – Generic Messaging: Typically a marketing message is created that is generic and sounds like this “BLAAH, BLAAH, BLAAH, BLAAH…Call me back”. No phone calls are ever returned and productivity is low.

#9 – No Sane Person Likes Rejection: No matter how thick your skin gets in sales, the fact remains that no one likes rejection and productivity is low.

#8 – Bottom Feeders: Companies give this inane task to the low guy on the totem pole mostly because no one likes rejection. Low-level people cannot have productive conversations with high-level decision makers and productivity is low.

#7 – You Can’t Teach Someone to Love Cold Calling: Any more than you can teach kids to love eating broccoli. The environment continues and productivity is low.

#6 – Everyone Wants Out: Sustaining this environment without getting burned out is almost impossible so turn over is high and productivity is low.

#5 – Rejection Breeds Contempt: Working in this environment breeds contempt for the work and for the company. This attitude can come across on the phone and productivity is low.

#4 – Telemarketing is Expensive: An unproductive telemarketing organization can become an expensive proposition for a company and if productivity is low, the organization will be removed and money will be wasted.

#3 – Phone Book Marketing: Many organizations start with a target list that has not been qualified or validated. This creates a low hit rate and low productivity.

#2 – Marketing to Sales Conversion Gap: When “leads” come from the marketing organization, the sales person does NOT take many of them to the next step. Fingers start getting pointed and over all productivity is low.

#1 – You May Have a Solution without a Problem: This is a core problem of many sales organizations who are trying to sell something that does not have demand in the market place. Having an aggressive sales organization will not solve this problem and productivity will be low.

Solution: Get the message? Nobody wants LOW PRODUCTIVITY! The good news is that there are many ways to get to new decision makers and drive revenues for your company and you can get there using email and the telephone as a productive business tool. Good sales and marketing principles can be applied to move an inside sales organization or prospecting in the right direction for your company. Savvy marketing and sales managers or outside marketing firms can help you get there by refining some of the issues above and turning this into a HIGH PRODUCTIVITY environment that will get you to the next level in your business. Need ideas or help? Check out some CRUSH Products including CRUSH Reports that will help you quick gain access to sales intelligence, contact info, org charts and business drivers. http://www.salesquest.com/demo/Reports-Manager/

Mimi Evans
SalesQuest

The definition of a mid-market company can be characterized in many different ways depending on the source. The mid-market can be determined by employee count, annual revenue, buying habits and IT needs, locations, etc. The mid-market companies are generally some of the fastest growing in terms of revenues.

While there are no hard and fast rules of exactly what companies make up the mid-market, we’ve defined it as any company with revenue between $250 Million and $1.5 Billion. With the launch of our new Mid-Market Manager earlier this year, we had to set what defines the mid-market in our new app.

We’ve always focused on the Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies and it’s exciting for us expanding our market to medium sized companies. We currently have 12,000 mid-market companies in our platform and 1.2 Million contacts and we’re continuing to increase those numbers on a daily basis.

Because mid-market companies have no exact definition, we’ve made the Mid-Market Manager very searchable depending on our customers needs. The search can be narrowed down by specific companies, annual revenue, employee count, area code and zip code. In addition, prospecting and marketing lists can also be built by industry and geography.

The mid-market definition will probably never be clean cut to everybody but our goal with our new mid-market app is to help our customers find prospects and customers in what they define as the mid-market.

Click here to view our Mid-Market Manager demo!

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
trisha.ellis@salesquest.com

Your buyers know you but do you know them? This is a very interesting thing for sales people to ponder – but if you want to be a top performing sales person, you better take notice!

Ever since the Internet became a resource and now with pages of social media sites available, buyers out there know a lot more before you meet with them.  Not only do they know about your company, your solutions and your competition, they may also know a lot more than you think about YOU!

Sam Richter, in his book, “Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling”, calls this “Buyer Intelligence” and has some great suggestions on how to use this to your advantage:

1.)   Make the initial meeting count by proving that your solutions meet a defined need and solve a real problem.  If not, there will most likely not be a second meeting.

2.)   Research, research, research – but do this only after you have qualified that there   is a need and that you are talking to the right people.

3.)   Use Sales Intelligence Tools to your advantage.  Sales revenue upside is 50% higher when approaching a deal using sales data and sales intelligence according to CSO Insights Research.

4.)   Knowing as much as possible gives a seller confidence and confidence leads to better meetings, more closed business and higher commissions

5.)   Before going into a meeting research the company, their issues, and also the personal data you can find on the people you’ll be meeting with.  Salespeople need to know the buyers as well or better than the buyers know YOU!

This valuable data that Sam is providing will be used to build out new Sales Intelligence Tools for our customers at SalesQuest.  With these thoughts in mind, we will help our customers with our Mid-Market Manager (M3), and also with CRUSHarmy™ which will provide this data in easy-to-digest information on each “BattleCard™”.

Thanks Sam, and keep the ideas coming!

Mimi Evans
SalesQuest
mevans@salesquest.com

2012 is expected to be a big year for Starbucks. They will be increasing capital expenditures, leveraging technology systems as well as opening new stores and remodeling more stores than they ever have in one year.

Starbucks is leveraging technology to improve their operations and full optimization of their new point of sale system, inventory management system and roll out of their new automated labor scheduling tool to help them deliver on their significant growth targets going forward.

Starbucks plans to open at least 200 new stores in US in 2012 and to remodel approximately 1700 existing locations. This is the most stores they have ever remodeled in a year.

Their capital expenditures have increased from fiscal 2009 spending $445.6 million to 2011 spending $532 million. In 2012, they’re expected to be between $800 and $900 million. This is an increase to their initial target provided last quarter, reflecting additional investments in store renovations globally, as well as the addition of manufacturing capacity to support their growing business.

The question remains, will their profit support their 2012 initiatives? According to their first fiscal quarter, their revenue grew 16% which is the largest gain since 2007.

If you have solutions that will help Starbucks to achieve their goals this year, now would be the time to reach out to them. Download the Fortune 1000 Starbucks sample CRUSH Report to find out other 2012 initiatives, budgets, goals, contacts and org charts.

Trish Ellis
Marketing Manager
SalesQuest
Trisha.ellis@salesquest.com