I’m amazed by the failure rate of today’s sales and marketing efforts in enterprise tech firms (startups and more mature companies too). Surveys show that maybe 20% of “marketing qualified leads” are actually leads. Only 1% of of cold calls turn into opportunities. Cold email response rates are even lower. Check the open rates on[…]
B2B Sales is a game played by companies to win new clients. It’s only a “process” when looking through the seller’s eyes. We focus on process too much in B2B sales, which often has us put prospects in a box that doesn’t fit. So, the first thing you have to get is that the buyer is[…]
The definition of a prospect universe is a gating decision for success. Here are some “pro-tips” from someone who’s built a lot of lists: 1. Accuracy counts in B2B – The best trick I’ve learned in the past couple of years is to use a tool like Kickbox.io to verify email addresses. While it only focuses[…]
Enterprise Sales is Dead – Long Live Enterprise Sales! from Glenn Donovan on Vimeo.
“The tragedy of the commons is a term, originally used by Garrett Hardin, to denote a situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each’s self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource.“ (Wikipedia) While the term was initially used to describe the lamentable conditions of[…]
Selling technology solutions to enterprises has always been a contact sport, yet in today’s digital world I think engagement and interactions are far less rich and meaningful than they were in the pre-internet days. It seems we’ve reduced digital engagement to “demand generation”, which looks to me a lot like the worst of consumer direct[…]
The longer I work with enterprise tech startups and later phase emerging technology companies (23 so far as an adviser, consultant or employee), the less certain I am of any particular formula or pattern for success that works from one to another. Yet all around me I see various people hawking their “formula for success”[…]
At what point should an enterprise tech startup begin scaling up a sales team? At what point should it expand into new verticals or adjacent markets? I happen to quite like the ideas embedded in “Lean Startup” techniques, particularly the concept of “product-market fit”. While not a new idea, the term neatly encapsulates that tipping[…]
It’s all around us, yet we don’t really talk about it much. Women are deeply effecting the social setting of business in our culture. I’m not here to say that these changes are good or bad or that the previously more masculine culture of business was bad or good. I’m merely here to point out some[…]