MarketStar Blog

For most businesses, the primary means of growth involves constant acquisition of new customers along with nurturing of existing customers. Through marketing on the internet, you can create customer acquisition programs while being able to track costs associated with each new customer and limit risk on advertising and marketing programs. This also amounts to new lead-generation and conversions for almost every company anywhere in the world. 

Developing an internet marketing plan and designing a great website is not good enough. Measuring the results and making the changes to the internet marketing and website design based upon the positive and negative feedback of the visitor’s response is imperative. 

So, what are the elements of online marketing that help generate quality leads, increase conversion rate and justify your marketing spend? A typical online marketing campaign consists of a combination of some or all of the following marketing techniques: 

When it’s time to let the world know what you’ve been working on, there are no end of strategies to consider for success. However, no matter what your product is, there are certain universal truths that you can apply to your SaaS marketing campaign, regardless of channel or audience. 

Introduction 

A 2019 report by LinkedIn states that soft skills training (honing creativity, persuasion, analytical reasoning, collaboration, and adaptability) forms one of the top seven focus areas for employers.1 In building soft skills, one of the most useful and popular tools is role-playing, which finds application in diverse fields ranging from the educational to the corporate environment. 

Role-playing allows a learner to assume the role or tasks of a job by practicing or simulating real working conditions. The primary objectives of role-playing are to learn, improve, or build upon the skills or competencies necessary for a specific position or outcome. In the sales context, the trainee practices the role that he or she is expected to perform (such as initiating a sales conversation or closing a sale) with one or more “customers," played by a more experienced peer, manager, or, at times, even a professional actor.  

Such role-plays are often conducted with an entire group of sales reps who observe each individual role-play. The role-plays can either be scripted for a sales rep, containing appropriate cues to steer the conversation, or the conversation can be improvised for each scenario. The idea is to simulate real-life sales situations as a way to resolve them. 

In the corporate scenario, role-playing for sales training leads to several desirable individual and organizational learning outcomes. 

Partner sales enablement, also referred to variously as channel sales enablement, reseller enablement or sales enablement channel management, involves providing channel partners with the necessary training, tools and resources to successfully sell vendor products and maximize revenue. For vendors, this function is crucial because of the changing nature of the sales process, wherein buyers are taking more control of their purchase journey and demanding higher quality inputs from their interactions with the sales team. Leveraging the partner channel helps meet customer needs better in this environment. 

Finding success with the partner channel isn’t as simple as just contracting them to sell your products, though. It requires strategic planning, engagement and support to get partners to sell your products as best as they can. Getting the maximum leverage out of a sales enablement effort requires smart strategy and meticulous planning in order to align business processes with the technological advantages provided by an enablement platform. 

Here are 8 steps to keep in mind while laying out a partner enablement roadmap and strategy: 

It is estimated that in 2017, over 1.66 billion people worldwide bought goods online. In the US alone, e-retail sales amounted to 2.3 trillion dollars, which according to experts, is projected to grow to 4.48 trillion USD by 2021.¹ Online shopping is no longer the fragile bubble it was in the 1990s. It is a thriving industry that has become a way of life for most of us.

Besides allowing enterprises to maximize their operational efficiency, the Internet of Things also opens up a whole new world of interfaces across which enterprises can connect with their customers. The shift embodied by the IoT isn’t merely an opening up of new channels of marketing. Rather, it fundamentally restructures the entire relationship chain between the enterprise, its products and its customers.

In the world of B2B sales there are different types of distribution partners, and each one plays a distinct role in reaching and servicing customers. Value-added resellers, for example, are high-touch partners that sell goods and services as part of a complete solution. At the other end of the spectrum are direct market resellers (DMRs), distributors that sell directly to businesses online or via telephone orders. DMRs maintain catalogs of goods to sell through online storefronts or by taking phone orders. DMRs can be an important part of any vendor’s value chain if you know how to provide the right support.

You have no doubt heard the phrase, “People are your most valuable resource.” Nowhere is that more true than in the world of B2B sales. Experienced, committed, savvy sales professionals are your most valuable asset, especially if you empower them to be valuable. Good sales reps are not service bots or order takers simply tasked with achieving quotas; they are skilled professionals who understand the value of what they are selling, how that value proposition meets customer needs, and the lifeblood of your revenue generation engine. When it comes to managing sales reps effectively, empowering them to succeed always yields better results.

Rapid market changes paired with new and increasingly complex product and service offers means one thing for sales: Adapt and evolve if you want to succeed. So, when it comes to the decision to overhaul your sales team for agility and scale, you have two options: Expand internally or partner up with an outsourced inside sales provider.

Your expertise is in selling B2B technology to companies that are seeking to improve operations, smooth out their workflows, and generally power new strategies for success. But how do you use technology as part of your SMB sales strategy? Does your sales tech stack stack up and give you access to the data, insights, and analytics you need to unlock efficiencies and increase sales volume?