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Join the Discussion Recent forum posts Sales Coaching by Kenneth Wills I would like to increase the sales of each sales rep. by 20% annua … Read More 3 years ago Competitive Positioning by Kenneth Wills Some of my competitors have exited the market, how can I seize the … Read More 3 years ago Email Marketing by Kenneth Wills On paper, email marketing should work. In practice, however, it do … Read More 3 years ago Pricing by Kenneth Wills My costs have increased. Should I pass these costs onto customers … Read More 3 years ago Marketing Strategy by Kenneth Wills It seems everything we have tried with regards to sales and market … Read More 3 years ago Featured Articles In Marketing It’s Profitability That Counts May 12, 2021 Jeff Josephson Featured , Marketing and Promotion , Sales and Sales Management , Strategic Market Planning (0) The most important metric, from the company’s perspective of course, is ultimately the profitability of a marketing program. This holds whether it’s an in-house telemarketing program, a direct mail program, trade shows, SEO, a drip campaign, or an outsourced telemarketing campaign. Getting a positive return on their investment – a net positive cash flow – is what determines whether it was worth doing. And it also determines whether they can keep funding it. Because of this, the quality of the leads matters as much as, if not more than, the quantity. We talked a bit about this in other articles... Read More The Economics of Lead Generation: What You Need to Know May 12, 2021 Jeff Josephson Demand Generation , Featured , Funnel Management , Lead Generation , Strategic Market Planning (0) When talking about money, it’s important to keep in mind what ultimately makes a business run. From a sales and marketing perspective, the economics of generating revenue in the B2B market are quite simple: You must spend money to make money, although some business owners evidently don’t quite understand it. For example, many companies allocate a fixed percentage of current or past revenues to fund their marketing efforts. However, this makes little sense because revenue is a consequence of promotion, rather than a cause of it. Expenditures for lead generation should always be viewed as an investment, even if it... Read More Positioning: Why Is It More Important Than Ever? May 5, 2021 David Wager Demand Generation , Digital Marketing , Featured , Lead Generation , Market Planning , Marketing and Promotion , Strategic Market Planning , Traditional Marketing (0) the first in a series of white papers discussing the forgotten steps to successful marketing. Background Having spent my life in the field of marketing and having had success, it’s probably not surprising that I know many marketing professionals that I worked with and many more that were competitors. We have managed to stay in touch over the years have watched with great interest the new developments new approaches new techniques developed and used to market their products and services. There is so much more information available today. It is no wonder that marketing can be far more powerful and... Read More The Problem with the Abuse of Telemarketers May 4, 2021 Jeff Josephson Featured , Lead Generation , Training and Coaching (0) Setting aside the details of how to do the job, I’d like to talk briefly about telemarketer abuse. This is the mistreatment, low pay, and job insecurity that are rained down on all telemarketers, both the good and the bad. Telemarketer abuse occurs because fewer than 5% of the candidates who present themselves as professional B2B telemarketers know how to do the job. As a result, business owners (and call center managers) have no choice but to ride herd on their employees. They need to record their calls so they can correct their technique (which is funny, since most call... Read More What Makes a Good B2B Lead Generation Specialist? May 4, 2021 Jeff Josephson Demand Generation , Featured , Lead Generation , Training and Coaching (0) Although much of what we publish on this forum is for anyone who needs to generate sales leads, such as a telemarketer, a salesperson, a sales manager, a business owner, or marketing executive, let’s focus for a moment on one person for whom that is their sole responsibility, the B2B telemarketer. To be clear, there are only two types of telemarketers operating in the B2B space: good ones and bad ones. That’s it. And while a bad one can become a good one (for example, through proper training,) there is a bright line dividing the two. Allow me to tell... Read More The Breakage” Problem: Why Salespeople Who Can Prospect Effectively Still Fail May 4, 2021 Jeff Josephson Featured , Funnel Management , Lead Generation (0) While most salespeople cannot find their own leads effectively, even if a sales team does its own prospecting successfully and consistently, they’ll still suffer from what’s known as the breakage” problem. The breakage problem is, generally speaking, the loss of concentration, focus or aptitude that occurs when you change from doing one kind of job to doing another kind of job. Sometimes breakage is good, and sometimes it’s bad. With salespeople, though, it’s catastrophic. Let’s say you’re a computer programmer, and your job is to write computer code. It’s possible to sit for hours in front of a computer screen... Read More Research Summary: How Much Does Lead Generation Really Cost? May 3, 2021 Jeff Josephson Demand Generation , Digital Marketing , Featured , Funnel Management , Lead Generation , Market Research , Marketing and Promotion , Sales and Sales Management , Strategic Market Planning , Traditional Marketing (0) Genuine lead generation takes time and costs money simply because a qualified lead often requires that the prospect express a desire to take action (e.g. talk to you). Going from a list of names (which may have cost something to acquire in the first place,) to a list of qualified sales leads, can be expensive and time consuming. At the very least, in order to find out if each person on the list has a need you have to call each of them and ask them, even if it only takes a few minutes apiece (although it could take hours.)... Read More What Is a Sales Lead? April 30, 2021 Jeff Josephson Demand Generation , Digital Marketing , Featured , Funnel Management , Lead Generation , Managing the Sales Cycle , Sales and Sales Management , Strategic Market Planning , Traditional Marketing (0) Because there is so much confusion in the market about this, we need to talk about the definition of a sales lead. We will go into this in greater depth later, but it is important to define a lead in the context of the B2B sales job, as there is much misinformation in the market about the term. But if we’re going to get anywhere at all, we need to define a sales lead in the context of the job of the salesperson who has to follow it up and clean up the confusion. Perhaps the best way to understand... Read More So, What Exactly Is Lead Generation? April 29, 2021 Jeff Josephson Demand Generation ,...