Youth, Lead Quality, Social Selling, Inside Sales and Outbound Marketing

Posted by Dan McDade

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on Mar 13, 2014 7:48:00 AM

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Sales & Marketing Expert Opinions

Each quarter I review my recent PowerViews shows and select one outstanding talking point from each expert (five this past quarter) who joined me. Their comments will surprise and enlighten you.

The interviews are available on our blog and YouTube channel. In the blogs each interview is broken down into smaller segments that allow you to watch brief clips around a specific topic.

 


Nick Stein, Vision Critical, Youth Meets Experience in Sales Force

Click to start video at this point—The young people entering the sales force are changing the dynamic between managers and their reps. Young people have grown up in an era of instantaneous, real time feedback, Nick said, so they expect to get answers immediately. They especially want to know about their job performance. Not so long ago, managers and their sales team were in one centralized location. But with the rapid growth in technology, a manager’s sales team can be spread out. That has pros and cons, Nick said. Among the negatives: the on-the-spot feedback that was vital to the relationship between a manager and his reps is now less common.

Nick Stein, SVP of Marketing at Vision Critical
Vision Critical is the world's leading provider of insight communities, currently supporting over 650 brands worldwide. Nick is a results-driven marketer, has been a writer for Fortune magazine, an adjunct professor at New York University, and an award-winning investigative journalist for CBC Television.

Matt Heinz, Heinz Marketing, The Quality of Sales Leads is Abysmal

Click to start video at this point—Matt said the biggest problem is that marketers are not taking responsibility for what happens after leads are generated. I agree. The quality of leads being generated nowadays is abysmal. In a recent study, it was determined that of 9,000 leads, only 1.28 percent were quality. Marketers and sales people need to be working towards the same goals.

Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing
When he’s not spending time with his wife, children, cats and six chickens, Matt is the head of the Seattle-based agency that prides itself on delivering results—more customers, higher revenue, lower costs. 

Dave Stein, ES Research Group, How Much Social Selling Should Sales Reps be Doing?

Click to start video at this point—Are you a sales rep in the high-tech industry? If so, you should probably be doing a lot of social selling. But if you’re a rep who sells heavy machinery, spending a lot of time on Twitter and LinkedIn probably isn’t an effective and efficient use of your time, Dave said.

Dave Stein, CEO and Founder of ES Research Group Inc., which assists sales trainers in selecting the appropriate providers.
Dave, a former sales rep, sales manager, VP of sales, competitive sales strategist, consultant, and sales trainer, has worked in 26 countries—with companies from the Fortune 10 to start-ups.

Chad Burmeister, ConnectandSell, Field Reps Should be Open to Moving Inside

Click to start video at this point—The traditional model of inside sales reps providing leads for the field is going away, Chad said. The technology available today is allowing veteran field reps to work in an office and not get burned out because the potential leads are largely automated. The boon in inside sales has been a benefit to sales reps and their families, since reps don’t have to spend the same amount of time in the field.

Chad Burmeister, Vice President of Corporate Sales at ConnectandSell
Chad was voted Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professionals by the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals 4 years in a row—2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013.

Ruth Stevens, Inbound Marketing is Tough to Scale

Click to start video at this point—In a recent blog post on Biznology, Ruth wrote, “The most reliable and scalable approach for reaching new B2B customers is outbound communications.” We talked about this issue and about the sustainable relevance of direct mail and cold calling. Social media and inbound sales are like the icing on the cake, she said. The cake still consists of the tried and true standby media channels.

Ruth Stevens, who is an expert in customer acquisition and retention.
Ruth has held high level marketing positions at Time Warner, IBM and Ziff Davis. A business professor at Columbia University, Ruth is also the author of “Maximizing Lead Generation: The Complete Guide for B2B Marketers” and a guest blogger at Biznology and HBR.org.

By Dan McDade


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Topics: B2B Marketing, Inside Sales, B2B Sales, PowerViews, Outbound Marketing


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