In India, we follow a April to March financial year and invariably, most companies go through a budgeting exercise during Jan-March time frame, where they define the goals that they are going to chase for the next financial year. The Revenue goals also in turn define the cost budgets that will be needed to support …
Why Goal Setting is Important, especially in Sales Read More »
Several organizations go on a sales overdrive, almost immediately. Many don’t even have their offerings in place, yet feel that this will evolve over time. They invest in an expensive sales force that keeps promising them great business, yet almost always fails to deliver. What seems to be the problem and how do you fix …
Over the last couple of years, I have had several intense discussions with several budding entrepreneurs and CEOs of mid-size companies. They all seem to want the best marketing plan, but they are not sure, when and how to start implementing it. How do you create the best marketing plan? A marketing plan is prepared, …
I was reading a very insightful article from HBR titled the end of solution sales. Here are some excerpts that I found very interesting and relevant to the B2B sales/marketing challenge. Strategy #1: Avoid the Trap of “Established Demand” Star performers treat requests for sales presentations very differently than average performers do. Whereas the latter …
I face this question quite often in the Indian market, as most companies fail to understand the role marketing plays in commercialization of its businesses. Most organizations get into a sales overdrive without even bothering to create basic marketing assets like website, collateral, flyers etc. They soon run out of gas and decide to shift …
Now that you have built a community following with the content that you have generated (& propagated), it\’s time to Nurture Leads in your pipeline. To consume your content, your prospects would have parted with their contact details that now form part of your DB at the website (through your lead capture mechanisms) Though they …
We are in the age of measurable marketing. You can use various mechanisms to propagate your content like email marketing, Online PR & Article submission, blog propagation, systematic back-link building strategy, PPC campaigns. For each, there will be various mechanisms available to analyze and track operations. It is important to Analyze performance of your marketing …
You have spent time & energy creating a content dashboard to support your demand generation plan and to create thought leadership through strategic marketing content. Now is the time to execute this strategy. You will be surprised to find out how you will be able to quickly use Content Marketing to generate Leads. Your content …
4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience Read More »
Traditional broadcast or push based marketing is on a downward spiral and is making way for community or social marketing. Companies now prefer investing more time in building credibility and trust among their target customer base by operating within the community rather than outside it. The question most marketers are trying to deal with is …
3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate Read More »
Traditionally, sellers have been looking for buyers and so the focus has always been on push based marketing efforts. These include things like mass mailing campaigns, participating in trade-shows, advertising and the type. Besides being very expensive, this traditional approach is losing its sting. In the age of Content Marketing, the important question to ask …
2. Invest in Content Marketing to Build Thought Leadership and a Strong following Read More »