Lance Cooper of Sales Manage Solutions invites you to imagine this picture… Turnover occurs - sometimes at an excessive rate. Sales managers work hard and struggle to find quality candidates for open sales positions. They place ads in local newspapers and get many responses. Some use Monster. Some use recruiters. However, many of their candidates come from people who cannot find a job anywhere else. Sales managers then sift through dozens of resumes to find only a few candidates worth an interview.

When the candidates arrive, the resumes look better than they do! Even so, sales managers decide to move ahead with the best candidates. They sell themselves - they make themselves see what isn’t really there. This results in hiring people who do not possess the personality traits of high performers.

Eventually, sales managers begin to lower their standards. They shift the focus and blame a difficult career for the inability to recruit high quality people. For every three to seven people they hire, only one seems to start off well. First year production decreases, turnover increases, and overall team production decreases. A negative sales culture forms.

What do these sales managers do wrong in the recruiting process?
Sales managers make poor hiring decisions when exhibiting the following behaviors…

This week’s guest post is an interview with Naviga CEO Kathleen Steffey and Matthew Schwartz, editor of Follow the Lead and a contributing writer at Crain’s BtoB and BtoB’s Media Business magazines. He can be reached at matthew.schwartz38@yahoo.com.

Sales and marketing alignment is all the rage right now, as companies grapple with how to blend the two disciplines together to create better efficiencies. But first they have to break down the silos, and we’re not about to hold our collective breath on that one. We caught up with Kathleen Steffey, founder-CEO of sales and marketing recruiting firm, Naviga Business Services, to get her take on whether the debate about sales and marketing alignment will result in concrete action.

Follow the Lead: What do you think are some of the concrete steps organizations can take to meld the two disciplines?

Steffey: First, they need to talk about it and acknowledge that the revenue opportunity in the groundswell space even exists.  Most companies are not on the bandwagon just yet and are still only attacking old school/traditional ways to gain revenue.  Second, they need to either hire marketing experts in this space or assign a key person to lead this initiative inside the organization.  The head of sales or marketing needs to be the advocate(s) behind the overall strategy and approach towards the execution.  The sales leader [also] has to incorporate the groundswell audience into the sales performance.  There needs to be core training on the how, what, when and where in order to capture this audience and stay in front of them. Marketing needs to be the provider of information and act as an ongoing resource for tools and strategies for the sales team to be effective. It’s a very different approach/strategy for sales people to be involved in, so the training and process needs to be coddled, at least at first.

FTL: What are the some of the pitfalls companies can avoid when trying to bridge the gaps between sales and marketing?

Steffey: Acknowledge, meet, collaborate and align.  Make sure that the sales and marketing strategy for the business is agreed upon and go hand in hand. There are many questions to prompt discussions: How is our target audience utilizing the groundswell? Are they using it to socialize? Make decisions? Gain information? Research and observe? Companies then need to ask what they are doing to keep in front of existing clients that are utilizing the groundswell and what can their individual sales people do similarly to approach this audience and maximize revenue opportunity? [Lastly], you have to ask: How are we tracking the effectiveness of this approach?

(This piece originally ran on Follow the Lead)

Craig Klein wants you to know that the emails you send to your customers, and the emails you’re not sending, could be shooting your sales performance in the foot. Believe it or not, changing the way you email your customers can do more for your bottom line than just about any new sales technique you learn this year.   

Read more here.

According to sales blogger, S. Anthony Iannarino, You have goals. Your company has goals. Whatever your sales goals are, they are these two enabling metrics can help you understand what you need to do to reach your goals. Moreover, the ability to control these metrics has a tremendous impact on your overall sales results and your ability to reach your goals.

This week’s post is from Matthew Schwartz, editor of Follow the Lead and a contributing writer at Crain’s BtoB and BtoB’s Media Business magazines. He can be reached at matthew.schwartz38@yahoo.com.

Amid the growing chorus for sales and marketing alignment I’m reminded of George Roy Hill’s classic film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” In one scene, after the two bandits evade U.S. law enforcement officials, Butch (Paul Newman) regales Sundance (Robert Redford) with his plan for the duo to scamper down to South America, where the prospects, according to Butch, are plentiful. “You just keep thinking, Butch,” says Sundance, with a chuckle, as if he’s heard Butch’s brilliant schemes a thousand times before (with little to no success).

Sundance’s response to Butch’s proposal is similar to what many b-to-b sales reps must think when their marketing counterparts hand them another batch of leads, with assurances that, with the right blend of content, distributed through the right channels, the leads are ripe for conversion. Sales execs take the latest lists, along with smile and a nod, and subsequently toss (or delete) most of them. At the same time, marketing executives can be forgiven for being constantly frustrated by the lack of feedback from sales execs about the nuances of a particular customer/close that marketers simply can’t glean from an algorithm.
Akin to Butch and Sundance, sales and marketing execs work toward the same goals, yet often disagree on how to achieve them. With increasingly sophisticated ways to segment customers, less may, in fact, be more for today’s sales execs. But that doesn’t necessarily pay the rent on the marketing side, where the idea is to generate as many leads as possible (even though, on closer inspection, a good percentage of the leads may turn out to be thin gruel). Indeed, a major part of the problem remains that management judges sales and marketing execs by different metrics, which, let’s face it, lends itself to a low-key hostility that is suffered by both sides.

Like the constant struggle for ROI, sales and marketing alignment has been bandied about for decades. But as the rate of change in b-to-b sales and marketing accelerates at breakneck speed, keeping sales and marketing execs in separate silos may be starting to become prohibitively expensive, if not passé.
“The single biggest reason companies fail is that they overinvest in what is, as opposed to what might be,” said strategy consultant Gary Hamel, in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled, “The End of Management.” Hamel added: “The thing that limits us is that we are extraordinarily familiar with the old model, but the new model, we haven’t even seen yet.”

Bridging the schisms between sales and marketing has to be a key element in the new model, however that formulates. With the Web wreaking both opportunity and havoc on the sales process, b-to-b companies now have a legitimate excuse to make the structural changes – in terms of budget and resource allocation, content creation, compensation and clearer delineations between sales and marketing execs on objectives, goals and ROI – that will start to make sales and marketing alignment a reality rather than just pleasant conversation.

To be sure, there are many sales and marketing executives who think alignment is folly, and that the two disciplines are too inherently different to be truly aligned. And while you won’t get 100% (or even 90%) of anything, stressing that sales and marketing alignment is doomed from the start is a defense of the status quo, which recent history has not been kind to.

B-to-b sales and marketing execs are increasingly focusing on areas such as Sales Enablement, Process Efficiencies and Lead Funnel Management. But software should be subordinate to the human component, which is often missing when b-to-b reps talk about sales and marketing alignment.

Real-time communication – and not laborious meetings bogged down by charts, graphs and cheerleading – has to be the linchpin to effective sales and marketing alignment. Sales and marketing execs should huddle regularly to provide the give-and-take that is needed to (perpetually) refine the sales process, from the top of the funnel down to the bottom. Studies continually show a direct correlation between lead generation ROI and the frequency that sales and marketing meet to collaborate.

While having closer ties within the office is crucial to aligning sales and marketing teams, sales and marketing execs also need to find the time to blend the professional and the personal. How about the VPs of sales and marketing meet up for a few rounds at a local golf course or grab a beer together before the long weekend kicks in? Socializing in an unhurried, mutually enjoyable (and physical) environment allows sales and marketing execs to create trust and build the sort of camaraderie that is often elusive in the office.

What do you think? Is b-to-b sales and marketing alignment attainable?

Author: Paul Mosenson, NuSpark Marketing

The utmost importance of optimizing the entire “visitor-to-lead-to-sale” cycle as an eMarketing strategy cannot be questioned.

If you don’t pay attention to a specific micro element of an eMarketing plan, the entire strategy won’t work as well; you’ll lose leads and sales.  We speak to a number of companies who have fancy-designed websites; but they can’t be found on search engines; they don’t convert visitors into leads, and once those leads are generated, they aren’t properly nurtured into sales.

To demonstrate the point, here’s an imaginary interview with John Doe, a COO of a large IT company.

Tibor Shanto, Renbor Sales Solutions was working with a group of sales people earlier this week.  The big complaint was the number of prospects who were on vacation.  Everyone is entitled to a vacation.  In fact they should be required to take one.  A break might have your prospect come back with a fresh outlook that could open the door for you! 

That does not mean you can sit back and take time off.  It means you need to focus on something productive… something that can long term results.  Here, Tibor shares two ideas to assist you with August sales frustrations.

With so many sales articles, sales books, and sales coaching philosophies, it sometimes can be overwhelming and hard to know where to start in terms of how to run your sales meeting effectively.

Many aspects of sales are over complicated. Keep it simple for you and for the prospective client to start seeing better results.

Jeremy J. Ulmer shares some ways to keep your next sales meeting simple.

Being such a fan of twitter (http://twitter.com/bridgegroupinc)Trish Bertuzzi thought it would be interesting to ask some fellow “twiteratti” to contribute sales productivity tips.  But, of course they had to do so in 140 characters - or just about 10 seconds - or less!  It was a fun and interesting exercise.
Here is what she received.

This week’s post is from Naviga’s partner Astron Solutions, courtesy of, Michael Maciekowich, National Director. Astron Solutions is a New York-based consulting firm dedicated to the delivery of human resource consulting services and supportive technology. They work nationwide to develop and implement human resource programs that support the strategic direction of organizations through the creation of a positive employee relations environment.

An age-old battle exists between organization needs and the desire of salespeople to enhance their earnings. Many salespeople, understandably, will take the road of least resistance in an effort to enhance their personal wealth. Unless there is a close Return on Investment (ROI) to the organization between sales goals and individual compensation, however, the process becomes a one-sided event. Case in point? When an organization is interested in margin and profitability, and the salesperson is focused on commissions based purely on sales volume.