With all the buzz around sales and marketing alignment we thought it was time for a sanity check. Analysts, consultants and technology providers have all thrown their weight behind the requirement for sales & marketing to be on the same page. But, having said that, how are we doing in moving towards that goal?

Rather than ivory tower it, we decided to take the question to the people in the trenches. We partnered with VorsightBP (a great sales training company) and surveyed 1,150+ B2B Sales Reps. The results were so interesting, we wrote an ebook:

Sales Speaks: Perceptions and Ponderings on Marketing Leads

(Note: this wasn't a witch hunt or a slamming Marketing/Sales session. We took a look at what the Reps had to say and tried to make actionable suggestions for moving the ball forward.)

 
Not a day goes by that I don’t see numerous bloggers, tweeters, etc. arguing passionately that cold calling is dead.

The problem is that people are confusing cold calling with outbound calling. Picking up the phone still works as part of a Sales & Marketing approach that integrates inbound marketing, social media, great content, lead nurturing, etc.

The part that has fallen by the wayside is the “cold” not the “calling.”

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InsideView recently shared Why Cold Calling is the Bottom of the Barrel, here’s an excerpt:

Colleen Francis of Engage Selling wrote a great blog post called 12 Ways to Get Your Prospects to Call You Back. With her permission, we have reprinted my fave 4.  Enjoy and Engage!

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No matter how persuasive, compelling or brilliant you may be, it's difficult to build a relationship with a prospect if you can't get them to call you back.

Most sales people use boring, outdated voice and email methods, which leave them sounding just like every other sales person in the world. If you want to get more return calls from your clients, then you have to do something different from everyone else out there - you have to stand out, be likeable, and actively deserve a return call.

Here are 4 of the best ideas we've found to help you stand up, stand out and make your clients want to return your calls:

This is a guest post by Henry Bruce, the founder of Rock Annand Group, a client acquisition strategy consulting firm focused on the B2B software industry. 

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Since 3 out of 4 new leads generated end up buying at some point in the next 18-24 months (according to MarketingSherpa), lead nurturing is no longer a wish-list program, but a competitive necessity. But for most B2B marketers, figuring where to start is always a daunting task.

To make matters worse, many approaches tend to over-complicate things. Marketers develop complex multi-touch campaigns that overwhelm their opt-in audience with too many communications and too many messages. Buyers become not only confused but suffer from subscriber fatigue.
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