buyer's journey

Most businesses have an accurate handle on the length of their sales cycle – the time that elapses between a lead being qualified and the closing of the deal. If your total sales cycle is six months, or three months, or twelve months, what does that mean and what can you change to improve results?

Some companies defy convention to become great. Stories abound of businesses that excel through innovative solutions which meet needs that buyers did not even know existed. Think Microsoft or the Sony Walkman, for example.

Sales and marketing teams are geared towards success, but it's how they handle failure that will make them rich. What do we do with the prospective customers who don’t proceed? Those who leak from our funnel? The answer is usually “not much”. They are usually dropped like a hot potato.

The buyer’s journey describes the process for typical business buyers as they move through the sales funnel. The journey is not an administrative process, but a cognitive one. How, though, can you more fully acknowledge buyers when shaping your sales process?

A key challenge B2B marketers face when it comes to content marketing is coming up with the content itself - that is, what exactly to talk about. But that's only one part of the story. Ultimately, content marketing is about generating leads, and the way you distribute your content is actually what makes or breaks the success of your efforts.

I was speaking with an executive the other day who repeated the concerns of her management team that their existing market was too small to sustain their growth. Expanding into new markets may look enticing, but there are large risks and costs associated with this strategy.

A common lament of marketing teams is that they often find themselves acting as a service desk to the sales team. In b2b marketing, it is a consistent dilemma.

There is never enough money and never enough resources in a business. Whether you work in a multinational corporation with billions of dollars to splash around, or a micro business with only a few staff, budgeting is always tough.

If you sense that your revenue engine is under-performing and believe that aligning Marketing and Sales will lead to the necessary transformation you might next ask when is the best time to launch an alignment initiative.

We’ve spoken about Funnel Logic and the way we manage work-in-progress using a sales funnel. One of the critical things in this process is keeping your funnel clean, as there’s nothing worse than a clogged funnel.