Posts Tagged ‘Fortune 1000’

Taking Action to Improve Lead Quality in Your Sales Pipeline

Monday, January 25, 2010 15:42 3 Comments

Now, more than ever, marketers need to take the necessary actions to improve their leads using sales intelligence to identify prospects, target accounts, and reduce their research time. Aberdeen’s survey stated 74% want to improve the quality of their leads. You need sales intelligence resources that take pressure off of your sales team, but also to enable sales reps to be more productive and formulate better sales strategies. For example, a sales intelligence tool might decrease the time reps spend researching prospects, but if the data is inaccurate and not up-to-date, the investment in the tool is money down the toilet. Not every sales intelligence tool is created equally, and without quality data, lead quality will not improve.

This was posted under category: Sales Development, Sales Enablement Tools, Sales Strategies Tags: , , , , , , ,

Using Sales Strategies to Relieve Pressures on Your Sales Force

Monday, January 18, 2010 16:08 1 Comment

The first part of the PACE Framework is “Pressures.” This is the first step in identifying the need for sales intelligence within a sales team: What is preventing you from hitting your numbers? Aberdeen suggests the “challenging economic climate” and “knowledge of the competitive landscape,” like competitors’ products and their customers. While the downturn in the economy has certainly hurt sales in every market and company, that can’t be changed to give a competitive advantage.

This was posted under category: Sales Enablement Tools, Sales Strategies Tags: , , , , ,

Why Strategic Account Planning is Necessary for Sales Success

Monday, January 11, 2010 11:35 3 Comments

Being prepared for a sales opportunity is a critical component of being a successful sales rep. Now, more than ever, being educated on your target account in preparation for an important meeting, presentation or call can be the deciding factor in whether or not the sale moves forward and the prospect becomes a customer. Account planning helps you to effectively prepare and stay focused on the prospect’s business objectives and goals to ensure that you achieve your planned results, create a consistent experience for the prospect, and ultimately identify how your product or service can make a positive impact on their business.

This was posted under category: Sales Development, Sales Strategies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Make the Most of Your Sales Intelligence Investment

Monday, January 4, 2010 13:10 1 Comment

The issue of how a sales rep’s time is spent is not as simple as eliminating the need to do personal research by investing in sales intelligence; it is clear that the buck does not stop there. It not only takes time to do the hard research. Even if the tools are paid for, there is still the issue of aggregating all of the content and making it available, easy to find, and consolidated in one place.

This was posted under category: Sales Enablement Tools, Sales Strategies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Do You NEED Sales Intelligence and Why is Purchasing it Not Enough?

Monday, December 28, 2009 11:11 No Comments

Obviously, just purchasing sales intelligence tools is not enough to decrease research time and increase lead conversion rates, sales cycle time, and reps hitting their quotas. And in this economy, if you are in the bottom 30% and not correctly utilizing these tools, it has resulted in a decrease in performance rather than just minute increases. This indicates that now is NOT the time to slack; it is the time to get your act together.

You cannot just give your reps a map and expect them to drive from point A to point B if you haven’t taught them how to drive, or even more fundamentally, how to read a map.

This was posted under category: Sales Development, Sales Enablement Tools, Sales Process, Sales Strategies Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,