B2B Marketing Blog

The celebrated catchphrase for the classic TV cop show Dragnet, “Just the facts , ma’am,” might as well be the description for ActiveConversion’s new AC-ProspectAlert.  This module allows sales people to access their alerts and other sales lead information without having to log into the full ActiveConversion system.  It was recently introduced with the new UI (user interface) for ActiveConversion and was designed to provide sales reps with what they want as fast as possible.

Previously sales people could access this information via a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) account like Salesforce.com but for greater flexibility and for those businesses that haven’t deployed Salesforce.com to their sales team, AC-ProspectAlert is just the ticket.

• Laser focused view: It optimizes sales time and allows sales reps to concentrate on engaging prospects and closing business instead of navigating through a maze of menus to get the information they need.
• Sales leads: For those organizations that use Jigsaw’s contact data, this has been seamlessly integrated into AC-ProspectAlert so that sales reps can access this data conveniently.
• Easy to use: Because it shares the same slick new UI as the full ActiveConversion services, sales reps can quickly and easily find the information they need.
• Track Key Indicators: The new dashboard has been designed specifically for the sales rep in a hurry.

As the man said, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Top Sales World a global sales community is hosting their  first live annual top sales awards ceremony on Thursday December 16th from 12 Noon Eastern.

ActiveConversion is a proud nominee of the prestigious 2010 Top Sales Tool. ActiveConversion is a sales tool and the primary resource for many sales professionals across various industries to generate and manage their sales leads.  ActiveConversion is an intuitive sales product and sold as a SaaS (Software as a Service) product.  Sales and marketing executives wanting to stay on top of their leads and actively converting them into qualified prospects  use ActiveConversion. Daily alerts via lead reports, Jigsaw integration, and Salesforce.com integration are some of components, for which ActiveConversion is known for.

We encourage our readers and supporters to share the love and vote for us. Voters may return and vote again every 24 hours, if that is their desire.

The public polls, which open on Wednesday November 24th, will represent 50% of the total votes, the other 50% will be provided by a panel of three experts in each category. The public polls will close at midnight Eastern on Monday December 13th.

There are many great sales methodologies out there, SPIN, Miller Heiman, EDGE framework and others. No matter which dogma you choose, they all have one common weakness, as good as they look on the page, they all need to be executed to matter.

There is no getting away from the fact that the biggest reason for a lack of sales is a lack of execution. The sad truth is that sales people know what they have to do, they just don’t do it. You can train them, but can’t make them.  It’s the age old “doer and the thinker”, in sales the doer executes and wins.  There are many great plans gathering dust on shelves, but the winning plans are the ones actually executed.

Join Tibor Shanto, a top sales expert and the co-author of “Harness The Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers”, and Yves Matson, senior account executive at ActiveConversion as they discuss strategies around sales methodologies and how to properly execute them.

In 45 minutes followed by a 15 min Q&A you will learn:

• How to successfully execute sales methodology?
• Why CRM systems do not get adopted?
• Why there is lack of execution?
• What are the four cornerstones of execution?

Click here to access the recorded webinar.  Also, get a copy of the presentation from Slideshare.

Are you interested in achieving sales growth with existing resources? Businesses are increasingly turning into sales optimization and lead management which frees up time for sales representatives to focus on high yield activities like engaging qualified prospects and closing sales.  Download this ActiveConversion whitepaper which shows you how lead management can help you achieve best-in-class sales performance.

Industry surveys indicate that only 10 to 25 percent of all leads are sales-ready, meaning prospects are interested and ready to buy.  A similar percentage of leads are not qualified at all. This means 50 to 80 percent of all leads generated can result in wasted effort if handled inappropriately.

By implementing a lead management system, the quality of leads will increase while the quantity of leads will decrease. Marketing will see a higher percentage of leads being followed up and sales will see a gratifying increase in the quality of leads presented to them. Companies that have implemented these tools have experienced a 30% or higher lead to sales conversion rate.

A significant advantage introduced with marketing automation systems is the capability to alert the appropriate sales representative at the moment any lead becomes sales-ready. This further reduces the load on the sales force and increases their effectiveness.

CEO and Co-founder of ActiveConversion Fred Yee was interviewed by host Will Crist on SLMA Radio Talk Show on September 9, 2010. The SLMA radio show is an interview with industry leaders and presents their opinions about current industry trends. These industry leaders share their management philosophy and their approach on topics such as sales lead management, lead generation and marketing automation. 

Find out why:

1. Salesforce.com has become the preferred CRM now

2. Hiring is picking up in select companies

3. You should use a CRM

4. A product like ActiveConversion is becoming indispensable to sales and marketing

5. Sales lead management is important to all B2B companies.

Listen to Fred’s insightful thoughts on the future of marketing automation and sales lead management for SMBs.

Right click and save to download the full episode.

SLMA Radio is a 50 minute internet radio show produced four times each month. It broadcasts live at 5 PM PST, in the United States from OC Talk Radio. The host is talk-show commentator Will Crist where he interviews industry leaders and they present their opinions about current industry trends. For more information, visit SLMA Radio . For more information on ActiveConversion, please visit ActiveConversion.com and follow us on Twitter & Facebook.

This is a true story from my days as a sales rep for a Hospital Information Systems vendor.  As we were driving on the way to a sales call, my colleague gestured at a street sign and laughed, “See, our customers are so easy to find there are even signs pointing the way there!”  As healthcare industry vendors who focused on the multi-million dollar operations known as hospitals, HMOs and clinics, our situation was the opposite of most B2B companies whose main challenge is generating new prospects.

Which begs the question, if all prospects are known, why bother with a marketing automation solution if you are a healthcare industry vendor?  The main reason is probably timing.  A Sales 2.0 solution will identify which of those institutions are sales-ready at the exact moment in the sales cycle.  As a sales rep it is very advantageous for me to be notified when a hospital had downloaded a particular white paper, watched a video, or visited a certain page on our corporate website.  And more importantly, have that information delivered directly to my Salesforce.com account and with email at the moment it happens.  It goes without saying, that this would give me a huge competitive advantage due to knowing their TIMING. Hospitals and their constituent departments each have their own budgeting cycle so it helps to be alerted when funding might be kicking in.

Another reason is INTELLIGENCE.  Even if a hospital isn’t ready to purchase your healthcare product or service, an advanced  marketing automation solution will tell which ones are researching your offering.  And if you have multiple products, it will identify which of your products have attracted their attention.  Better products will even give you contact names, size of institution, location etc. This helps to qualify opportunities. You can even to put them on a ‘watch list’ so that you can tell when they re-visit and alert the right sales rep.

Today, leading healthcare industry vendors use Sales 2.o tools like this to be more competitive, more productive and more timely. They’re the guys who seem to ‘know’ where there are deals, and when they’re sales-ready.

Last week at the Salesforce Dreamforce conference, ActiveConversion was invited to be part of a panel on email marketing. The panel covered some basics on email marketing along with specific applications on campaigning within Salesforce, lead nurturing and the impact that social media has on email marketing.

An interesting observation I took away was that many B2B Marketers are not using email marketing on a regular basis.  I feel like this is something which we take for granted, because we have been using email marketing for so long.  I thought it would be valuable to cover the 5 tips for email marketing which were covered in the presentation:

1. Targeted Lists – Ensure you spend the time when building your lists to segment them.  This allows you to send out more targeted messages and offers, which will help give you a higher response rate and better return on your efforts.  Fields to segment on include: Country, City, Zip, Phone, Company size, Job title/level, past purchases, Age, Gender, etc
2. Targeted, Relevant & Fresh Content – Build messages which are relevant to those groups which you’ll be targeting in your offer. Use fresh content and offers to encourage the desired outcome of your email (ex. New whitepaper, limited time discount, new product announcement, etc)
3. Tracking and Reporting – To improve the quality of your email marketing be sure to use the built-in tools for tracking or reporting of your marketing campaigns.  Some of the metrics you may choose to measure success on include: Unique open rates, Unique click-through rates, Delivery success rate, Conversions and Unsubscribes, and Post click-through activity scoring.
4. Go Viral – Email is a great means to get your marketing messages out because they are easily forwarded and shared with others.  Make it easy for your emails to be forwarded or shared by your recipients
5. Permission is everything – Allow prospects to opt-in to receive your marketing messages and respect their privacy and requests if they choose to unsubscribe. When you are requesting information from your prospects, ensure you make it clear that their information will not be sold or rented to any third parties and it is being collected to be able to provide information on your company’s products and services

You can view the recording of this presentation and panel discussion here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eAkoptsBG0

Our man at DreamForce is Paul Uppal and he’s tweeting live from the floor.

Feel free to ask him questions.

Our man at Dreamforce alerted us to SFDC’s big announcement regarding the launch of Chatter.  Read the skinny on it from from ZDNet: SalesForce.com kicks off Dreamforce, announces Chatter.

“The company, in a statement, says Chatter will “revolutionize the workplace” by leveraging social networking models that have become popular among the mainstream, notably Facebook, and bringing them to a secure and private cloud where people, content and applications will have profiles feeds and groups.”