Editor’s note: this blog was originally published in December 2014 and has been revised and updated in May 2020 for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Mylast blogdiscussed the problems that can arise from an inconsistent sales pipeline. I equate it to...
We know that in the manufacturing and industrial world, setting production goals, establishing quality metrics, and creating work instructions are a necessity. Unfortunately, it is not surprising to find companies in this space don’t treat their sales and marketing...
I recently had the good fortune of meeting with a group of colleagues to discuss what the heck aCRMreally is. We came up with a few acronyms: You get the drift. CRM has a pretty poor reputation and we...
CRM often goes hand-in-hand with sales. But do you realize that a CRM is much more than that? Inprevious blogswe discussed how CRM bridges that marketing-sales gap. It’s a record of all interactions (like marketing activities) with a contact,...
B2B Business Intelligence for Lead Generation For anyone involved in B2B lead generation, it’s always good to think about what you can do to get the most out of each interaction with a prospect. Sometimes you just need to...
Marketing trends and best practices are always changing. It seems like just yesterday we were producing shiny brochures for snail mail. Then it was all email. Then email was dead. Then it wasn’t. But when to send? Tuesdays used...
Not too long ago I was talking with one of the professional sales trainers at Hubspot and it got me thinking about just how much I enjoyed their bootcamp class. It prompted me to go back and reread a...
If you’re like most in manufacturing, continuous improvement is always on your mind. You spend hours finding ways to streamline production, innovate, bring more value to your customers, increase your revenue, and on and on. One way that manufacturers...
As interns, we are considered the “fresh eyes” of the industry. So why is it, in school, the term CRM is glossed over? We hear it in our lectures. We know the meaning of the term. Customer Relationship Management....
History Over the years of both doing direct selling and managing sales teams, I began to analyze why sales forecasting was so unreliable. Why could we not get to a high degree of accuracy month over month? It occurred...