From Benchmark: How to Write a Sales Email that Won't Get Ignored
Email marketing remains a robust sales and prospecting tool. While using email as part of your strategy is great, it's how you create those sales emails that actually matters.
The Smart Growth Roundup is our biweekly newsletter full of industry and Lift insights. Every edition includes a specific focus in one of the following categories: Revenue Operations, Demand Generation/Lead Generation, Sales Performance, Sales Acceleration/Enablement, Database Management, or Go-to-Market Strategy. Here you'll find the entire archive of all our editions to the Smart Growth Roundup along with the web version of each email.
October 11, 2022: Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From SalesFolk: 3 Cold Email Mistakes That Ruin Sales Conversations
Reaching out to leads via cold email can be intimidating at first. Will your message resonate with the people you want to start a sales conversation with or will you be rejected or ignored?
From Yesware: 10 Follow-Up Email Mistakes That Are Costing You Time and Money
A follow-up email is usually about getting what you want, but you can't do that without giving your recipient what they want. Yesware provides you with 10 mistakes to avoid at all costs.
From Drift: 3 Shifts B2B Sellers Need To Make To Modernize Their Selling
We need to modernize our approach to selling to meet buyers where they are with a personalized, frictionless experience. Drift provides 3 major shifts sales teams need to embrace to do exactly that.
September 27, 2022: Revenue Operations
From marketing charts: 3 Points About the Marketing Ops Professional
According to a study from MarketingOps, marketing ops professionals tend to feel more valued by their organization than fairly compensated for their level of experience. Here are 3 takeaways from the report.
From MarketingProfs: The Missing Piece of Revenue Intelligence: Content Engagement Data
Revenue teams have it tough trying to navigate digital selling, changes in buying behavior, and a volatile market. What do they need to accurately assess deal health and help their organizations win?
From Forbes: AI For RevOps: Ready For Takeoff
Most businesses that try to implement AI are not aware that a unified RevOps data model is a prerequisite to experiencing the full value.
From Wordstream: What Does Revenue Operations (RevOps) Have to Do With Marketing?
RevOps has become a common term in business lingo. It refers to the management of the revenue funnel of any given business. But how exactly does that work?
September 13, 2022: Go-to-Market Strategy
From Gartner: Why Context and Situational Understanding Should Guide Your Go-To-Market Strategy
Never has it been clearer that the B2B sales playbook that got us here will not get us where we need to be. The traditional model is increasingly out of sync.
From terminus: How Today’s Changing Market Is a Golden Opportunity for Marketers
Marketing and the entire go-to-market function that drives and grows revenue in B2B companies like yours is actually at an inflection point.
From SBI: Do you have the right leadership to execute your 2023 growth strategy?
SBI's latest research shows CEOs are generally lacking confidence and conviction in their growth leadership roles.
August 30, 2022: Sales Performance
From SBI: The 5 P's of Sales Talent Motivation and Retention
Creating a culture of winning is challenging. What are the keys to motivating sales personnel so that your strategy is best positioned and you capture market share faster than the competition?
From Harvard Business Review: A Checklist to Help You Grow Your Sales Team
Companies with rising sales, or who see the potential for revenue growth, logically seek to increase the size of their sales force. But doing this isn’t simple. Follow these six steps to do it right.
From The Pipeline: Want to Train Better SDRs? Put Them in Control of Their Career
Nearly 40% of reps in the sales industry turn over in less than two years. The Pipeline can help you solve the de facto experience for a sales development representative.
From HubSpot: 10 Steps to Building a High-Performing Sales Team
Not putting time and effort into building a successful sales team will affect all areas of your business, especially when it comes to meeting overall goals. Learn more with expert insights from HubSpot.
The Keys to be Successful
August 10, 2022: Demand Generation/Lead Generation
From Nextiny: 8 Reasons People Ignore Your Email
You want to increase your email engagement as much as possible. So, if people are ignoring your emails, it's crucial to identify and solve the problem. Here are 7 reasons why your email could be getting ignored.
From Forbes: 14 Go-To Tactics That Help Boost Open Rates For Marketing Emails
Getting people to open your emails is key to getting your products/services in front of prospects and building customer loyalty. The big question is, what inspires people to actually open an email?
From DGMG: Why This Outbound Email Did Not Work
Using technology for the sake of using technology can demolish your chance to build trust with a prospect. So, how can you successfully use tech in marketing? Find out with this DGMG article.
From Digital Marketing Institute: A Practical Guide to Email Marketing Metrics
An optimized email marketing campaign has the potential to be all-powerful, driving better returns and higher levels of engagement. But, how do you measure it all? DMI can help you with that.
July 12, 2022: Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From Gartner: Chief Sales Officers: Don’t waste your sellers’ time. Get your ruthless on to protect sellers from time sinks.
There’s work to do and decades of trading operational efficiencies for sales inefficiencies need to be remediated. Fast. Learn why with this article from Gartner.
From Indeed: How To Be a Good Salesperson: Habits for Success
A salesperson must form trusting relationships with customers and meet or exceed sales goals. Find out what makes a good salesperson here.
From Drift: 4 WAYS TO BECOME A BETTER SELLER (HINT: IT’S ABOUT BUYERS)
Did you know, among the information sources B2B tech buyers used in 2021, sales reps ranked fourth? Salespeople can’t just sell anymore, they have to become trusted advisors.
From SocialMediaToday: 5 Steps to Empower Your Sales Team with Content Experiences
Are you creating content that aligns with the needs and aims of your sales team? SocialMediaToday gives you 5 Steps to close some critical gaps.
June 28, 2022: Database Management
From Insycle: The Business Impact of Not Maintaining CRM Data
Customer data touches nearly every department in an organization. Insycle takes a look at how poorly maintained CRM data impacts different departments in an average company.
From CloudFiles: Why You Should Use CRMs
For a CRM to extract the most benefit out of the opportunities provided to you, defining the goals of your business is crucial. Understand the importance of using a CRM today.
From Lucidchart: Data models: CDM vs. LDM vs. PDM
With the right data model, you can visualize how your database works - from the data elements to the relationships among them and how data is used in business processes.
From zapier: The curse of bad data on your marketing content
The internet is awash in bad and misused data - and a lot of the bad data is finding its way into marketing content. When using data in your content, these are the questions you should ask yourself.
June 7, 2022: Demand Generation/Lead Generation
From DGMG: What You Need To Know About Content Distribution
There’s one huge myth surrounding content distribution: If you build it they will come. This ain’t Field of Dreams. Before you build your content, read what DGMG has to say about content distribution.
From ZEN MEDIA: 10 Ways to Repurpose Your Content for Maximum Output
The internet never sleeps, which means it needs to be fed—constantly. And what does it like to eat most? High-quality content. Here are 10 ways to repurpose your existing content.
From Digital Marketing Institute: How to Develop Your Editorial Calendar
Every piece of content you produce has to fit into your overall digital marketing strategy. Here's how you can start developing your editorial calendar to help you achieve revenue goals throughout the year.
From Nextiny: How Refreshing Old Content Can Drive New Traffic To Your Site
Did you think you were done with that blog you posted in 2016? It’s time to dig up the unoptimized and underperforming blogs of the past and breathe new life into your backlog.
Unlock A Better Sales Process
May 24, 2022: Go-to-Market Strategy
From CRAYON: B2B Buyer Personas: Everything Marketers Need to Know
In order to stand out in a crowded market, you need to position your solution in a manner that resonates with your prospective customers.
From Forbes: How To Help Sales Close More Deals With Buyer Personas
No matter what your industry is, sales success relies on having a customer-driven strategy. Forbes has you covered on how to leverage buyer personas for sales enablement.
From New Breed: Why Personas Matter to Marketing, Sales and Service
Buyer personas aren't just a tool for marketing teams. Anyone who interacts with customers should be involved in the process of identifying and defining key buyer personas for your business.
From The Pipeline: How To Use Personas For Better Marketing
Set yourself up for success with marketing personas. By developing buyer personas, you can ensure that your marketing efforts don’t go to waste.
May 10, 2022: Revenue Operations
From Trujay: Top 8 Reasons CRM Adoption Fails and How to Implement Successfully
Various researchers put the CRM failure rate between 18% & 69%. If we estimate the total result from these CRM project studies, the failure adoption rate of approximately 30%. Learn more about why with Trujay.
From LinkedIn: Why 70% of all CRM projects fail... and how yours will not be one of them.
CRM system follows commercial strategy … not the other way around.
It is and remains the DNA of marketing, sales, and service. Anne Guethoff explains a successful approach to CRM systems.
From Forbes: On CRM: A Simple Way To Fix Your CRM Adoption Problem
You've spent thousands on a customer relationship system and your people aren't using it. User adoption is among the highest of concerns with CRM systems and Forbes will show you how to solve this problem.
From Forrester: Executive Guide 2022: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
The flurry of technology-fueled disruptions that have shifted the power from businesses to consumers continues to drive greater customer expectations. Read Forrester's study on CRM solutions and strategies.
April 27, 2022: Database Management
From Harvard Business Review: 3 Ways Data Dashboards Can Mislead You
We all love dashboards, but dashboards aren't the magic view some managers treat them as. While they provide snapshots of important measures, dashboards can be poor at providing the right context.
From Databox: 10 Common Dashboard Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Are you pouring your heart and time into dashboards no one appreciates? Fix these dashboard design mistakes and watch things change!
From ZenMedia: Why Big Data Doesn't Always Lead to Better B2B Marketing Decisions
How do B2B marketers identify the data that matters amidst the noise and vast amounts of data that's available, but not useful?
From Insycle: HubSpot Data Quality: Why Dirty CRM Data Hurts Your Marketing
There are an unending number of ways that bad business data can have a negative impact. Here are 3 ways bad HubSpot data can hurt your marketing campaigns.
April 12, 2022: Sales Performance
From The Center For Sales Strategy: Effective Feedback for Sales Performance
Almost every sales organization has various types of sellers. There is an important technique that can give you a big boost with all of them that top-performing sales managers use to stay on top: Feedback.
From Harvard Business Review: Are You Paying Attention to the Right Sales Metrics?
A tremendous amount of time is spent reviewing information that has little influence on sales metrics. However, there are leading indicators for CEOs to look at in order to influence outcomes and drive growth.
From SBI: Using Data to Drive Sales Strategy and Execution
The most successful organizations are finding ways to drive greater certainty and predictability into their business through data. Ready to drive a discipline of data into your sales strategy?
From HubSpot: 21 Ways to Improve Individual and Team Sales Performance
Good sales performance is highly valued, but it can also be tough to achieve for many salespeople and organizations. HubSpot has 21 ways to improve your sales performance for consistency.
Increasing Adoption in RevOps and Your Go-to-Market Strategy
March 28, 2022: Go-to-Market Strategy
From HubSpot: 7 Proven Ways to Know Your Audience Better
When you know you audience, you can ensure the items you sell and the content you produce consistently resonate with them. Learn how knowing your audience will help you convert more leads.
From Forrester: Three Reasons Why Your CEO Should Embrace An Audience-Focused Go-To-Market Strategy
Taking an audience-focused approach aligns teams who can better serve the customer and yield better business results. Here's why you should be embracing this strategy.
From Crayon: 8 Pain Point Examples From the Real World (+ Tips for Better Understanding Your Prospects)
If you want to win in your market, you need to position and promote your solution in a way that make prospects think, That's exactly what I'm looking for.
From SBI: 7 KPIs to Evaluate Go-To-Market Effectiveness
Evaluating the effectiveness of a GTM strategy, and the team driving it, is a challenge. How do you know if you have the right strategy?
March 10, 2022: Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From CRAYON: 9 Sales Enablement Tools Your Team Needs to Win a Competitive Battle
A sales rep has entered a competitive situation: are they ready to go to battle and win? A lot can go into preparing that sales reps have to handle...Here are 9 key sales enablement tools from CRAYON.
From The Pipeline: How to Fix the Cracks in Your Sales Tech Stack
As sales and marketing tech stacks grow more complex, the infrastructure is beginning to show some digital cracks. The good news is The Pipeline can show you how to fix and prevent these problems.
From SBI: Five Questions with Smart Selling Tools’ Founder, Nancy Nardin
The sales tech landscape continues to explode, with more than 1200 solutions currently available for growth leaders to purchase. Get to know Nancy Nardin and her top predictions for sales tech in 2022.
From Forrester: Four Steps Sales Leaders Should Take To Make The Right Sales Tech Investments In 2022
Sales leaders must make the right investments in sales technology if they want to help their sales teams win in 2022. Sales leaders should identify the right sales tech investments with Forrester's 4 steps.
February 22, 2022: Demand Gen/Lead Gen
From DGMG: How to Repurpose Content Across All of Your Channels
There’s nothing wrong with using the content you already have to inform the content in other channels. DGMG wants to show you an example of how they did this with a marketing lesson from the '60s.
From Digital Marketing Institute: Content Marketing: How to Create Great and Distribute Great Content
Great content doesn’t involve plugging your products endlessly. Instead, it offers real value to people – and most importantly, it serves a purpose.
From HubSpot: 12 Great Examples That Prove the Power of Repurposing Content
Stagnant organic traffic is the last thing you want to see when reviewing metrics, but it’s an issue that every marketer deals with. So to inspire your repurposing efforts, HubSpot put together 12 examples.
From Zen Media: Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, and Recycle Your Content
If you want to extend the reach of your brand or business, you need to create a constant stream of content. It's also a struggle to do this on a regular basis. But don’t worry. Zen Media has the solution.
February 8, 2022: Revenue Operations
Access the web version of the newsletter here.
From Crayon: 5 Next-Level Tactics for Gathering Competitive Intelligence
You can’t afford to spend too much time in gathering mode. So, to help you maximize the impact of your efforts, Crayon's blog post will explore five next-level tactics for gathering competitive intelligence.
From InsightSquared: 2020: A Look Back in Revenue Intelligence
When it comes to innovation in revenue intelligence—this has been a year that has transformed this industry drastically—for the better. So let’s countdown the top 5.
From People.ai: Forrester Report: Revenue Operations & Intelligence – The People.ai POV
Revenue teams are still struggling to find a repeatable winning formula, and People.ai believes the core of that problem comes down to one thing: data.
From Forrester: Revenue Operations And Intelligence (RO&I) Is Now Core To A Go-To-Market Tech Stack
It is now imperative for B2B organizations to have a comprehensive view into buyer relationships and engagement activity.
A Start to Strategy & Revenue Operations
January 25, 2022: Sales Performance
From Forrester: Four Things Sales Executives Should Do Immediately To Ensure A Fast Start To 2022
To help start the year on the right foot, Forbes identified four things sales leaders should do in January to ensure a strong start to 2022.
From The Harvard Business Review: Is Your Sales Team Struggling to Sell Solutions?
Why hasn’t the shift to selling solutions happened already? This article outlines three primary reasons and explains why it’s more a leadership issue than a sales issue.
From The Center for Sales Strategy: Minimizing Internal Roadblocks – Let Your Sellers Sell!
Hunters like to hunt, but many don’t really like to cook or clean up after their kill. What are ways that you can let your sellers sell and minimize the roadblocks they deal with?
From SBI: 5 Ways Sales Leaders Create a Winning Culture
Here are 5 ways sales leaders set a foundational sales culture that helps them attract and maintain a well-oiled sales machine.
January 11, 2022: Database Management
From Insycle: The Business Impact of Not Maintaining CRM Data
Why should I invest my time, energy, and money into maintaining CRM data? You have to take a broad view of how that data is used.
From The Pipeline: Dirty Data: How to Spot and Clean Bad Data Types
Using dirty data to fuel your business initiatives is like putting the wrong fuel type in your car. Here we'll tackle some urgent dirty data questions.
From Forbes: The Death Of Dirty Data: The Importance Of Keeping Your Database Clean
Data must be useful. It should provide opportunities for strategic insight and support data-driven decisions. This is where the quality of data comes into play.
From Synthio: 5 Best Practices for Data Cleaning
Today, nearly 67% of businesses rely on CRM data for growth of their bottom line. Yet, 94% of B2B companies suspect inaccuracy in their database. Do you need to consider data cleaning?
December 14, 2021: Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From The Pipeline: 6 Ways Breaking Sales Call Rules Leads to More Sales Success
It's time to make your own rules. Breaking from tradition will help your team stay adaptable and engaged in a shifting marketplace.
From Sales Benchmark Index: Accelerating Growth Through a High-Performance Sales Culture
SBI recently analyzed 15+ best-in-class sales organizations to understand what separates market leaders from their peers. One common theme separated the best from the rest.
From Crayon: 7 Metrics You Can Use to Measure the Success of Your Sales Enablement Efforts
Whether you're a marketer or a sales manager, there are innumerable ways you can empower sellers to do their jobs more effectively.
November 30, 2021: Demand Gen/Lead Gen
From HubSpot: Why Buying Email Lists Is Always a Bad Idea (And How to Build Yours for Free)
You need people who you can email. Here is a list of clean and effective ways to build your email marketing list without simply buying one.
From CXL: Email Marketing Strategy: Collecting Subscribers, Users & Loyal Customers
Break down the main elements of high-performing emails to show you how to drive action from your campaigns, and learn how to create a strategy that fits your customer lifecycle.
From Semrush: 12 Paid Advertising Mistakes & How You Can Make Your Ads Better
Paid advertising platforms have become more complex. There are more opportunities to make small mistakes that can be costly. Here are some simple mistakes that can kill your advertising and how to fix them.
From VirtualImage: 10 Signs It's Time for a Website Redesign
If your website has experienced one or more of these pain points described here, it might be time for a redesign.
Increase Your Ability to Win Sales
November 16, 2021: Revenue Operations
From chargify: How Does your Technology Stack Change When you Take a Revenue Operations Approach?
Learn how RevOps relates to your toolset and how to figure out if your toolset fits into your new RevOps alignment.
From Harvard Business Review: Don't Buy the Wrong Marketing Tech
The number of vendors offering marketing tech is exploding, but too many companies take a "bottom-up" approach: rather than starting with the objective, they begin with what is being sold to them.
From Lucidchart: How to choose the right technology stack for software architecture
Consider these things when choosing your software architecture tools, and get an understanding of what tech is currently popular to help you decide on a software development stack.
From Drift: 5 Steps to Unlocking Your Revenue Team's Potential
We can no longer think of marketing, sales, and customer success as separate, siloed teams. Together, they are one single revenue team.
November 2, 2021: Go-to-Market Strategy
From Emotive Brand: How to Get the Most Out of Strategic Messaging
Messaging is not going away. What's changed is the way we communicate. The messaging we provide must be useful from day 1.
From CXL: How to Build a Messaging Strategy that Grabs Your Customer's Attention
Explore how you can set yourself apart from the competition and deploy a messaging strategy that resonates.
From Profitwell: How to write a brand positioning statement that fosters retention
This article explains what a brand positioning statement is, gives examples, and helps you get started with creating your own.
From Crayon: The 5 Best Brand Positioning Examples We've Ever Seen
Look at concrete examples of brand positioning, what you can learn from each example, and how you can leverage those learnings to improve your own efforts.
October 19, 2021: Sales Performance
From techstars: The Top 10 Mistakes In B2B Sales
Get insights from 40 years of operational experience and interviews with 32 internationally successful founders on the mistakes made in b2b sales.
From The Center for Sales Strategy: Slow Down the Sales Process So You Can Speed Up the Sale
Everybody wants to sell faster. On the surface that sounds like a good idea -- but it's not.
From Harvard Business Review: Are You Paying Attention to the Right Sales Metrics?
There are likely specific measures of progress that are particularly meaningful to your business. Are you tracking them?
From Forrester: Transformation, Not Adaptation, Will Be Key For B2B Sales Leaders In 2022
To succeed in 2022 and beyond, B2B sales leaders need to transform and embrace the new digital normal.
August 5, 2021: Go-to-Market Strategy
From Sales Benchmark Index: 3 Keys to an Unmatched Account Segmentation Strategy
A good account segmentation will keep the lights on, but a great segmentation is how market leaders surpass their competition. How does yours compare?
From StoryBrand: 5 Ways to Make Your Customer the Hero in Your Marketing Material
Learn how you'll be sought after to help prospects in their journey when you position them as the hero and your company as their guide.
From Crayon: 6 Steps to a Strong(er) B2B Value Proposition
Whether you're starting from scratch or revisiting an existing value proposition, here's a 6 step process you can follow to maximize the quality of your final product.
From Visual Capitalist: The Biggest Business Risks in 2021
We live in an increasingly volatile world, where change is the only constant. Keep these risks in mind as you're updating your strategies.
Foundational Resources for All Businesses
October 5, 2021: Database Management
From Zoominfo: Building a Sales Tech Stack? Start with Good Data
Sales teams are faced with hundreds of solutions, but without high-quality data to connect them all, many tools can turn into empty boxes that fall short of their goals.
From Insycle: What Are the Benefits of HubSpot Data Cleansing?
Data cleansing by hand isn't realistic -- it would take you weeks to clean out every record. What you need is a data cleaning solution.
From Lucidchart: Database management best practices
Your work isn't done after a database is created. You need to have a number of good management best practices in place to keep data quality high & database performance on target.
From databox: Cleanup Your Bad CRM Data Like the Pros Do
Sixty-seven marketers share the best ways to combat dirty CRM data issues, so you can improve your marketing & sales effectiveness.
September 21, 2021: Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From Gartner: Evolve Sales Enablement to Support Revenue Operations
Sales leaders should shift from sales enablement to revenue enablement to support revenue operations in today's complex B2B buying & selling environment.
From LinkedIn - Gong Labs: 7 Tips for writing the perfect follow-up sales email (according to science)
After analyzing over 300,000 emails specifically on follow-up prospecting emails, Gong learned two major things about the formula for setting meetings.
From OpenView: How to Hire Enterprise Salespeople
Building an effective enterprise sales team for the long haul starts with the people you hire. Reflect and strategize so you can hire the best people.
From Sales Benchmark Index: How to Empower Your Sales Team to Have Meaningful Conversations
Better understand your buyer's needs and help them get access to timely information, customer insights, and effective communication tools.
September 7, 2021: Demand Generation/Lead Generation
From CXL: How to Use Storytelling in Business to Build Captivated Audiences
Learn how to apply to art of storytelling in your marketing initiatives to engage and grow your audience, when to use it, and when not to.
From Copyblogger: What's the Difference Between Content Marketing and Copywriting?
If you're writing great articles that people would love to read, but you're not getting the traffic you want, the problem may be ineffective copywriting.
From Harvard Business Review: Research: When A/B Testing Doesn't Tell You the Whole Story
By identifying the characteristics that actually correlate with high sensitivity, marketers can proactively target their campaigns at the customers who will be most receptive to them, increasing ROI.
From OpenView: How to Write an Outreach Email That Someone Will Actually Read
With these 3 key tips, you will have everything you need to improve your outreach campaigns and make real connections with people.
August 23, 2021: Revenue Operations
From CloudFiles: What is the difference between ECM, DMS, DAM, CMS, & FMS?
Streamlining business documents can be hard. There are so many different types of document management systems. This article differentiates between the above options.
From Forbes: B2B Revenue Operations Is Seeing Greater Centralization, But Can Organizations Make It Stick?
This article highlights a big takeaway from a revenue operations research survey from Forrester and what the insights mean for both the approach to revenue operations and practitioners.
From Drift: Want to Accelerate Your Revenue? Here's Why You Need Conversational Sales.
Ask any marketer, sales rep, or customer success person the most important metric they're chasing. Peel back those metrics and you'll see it comes down to one thing: accelerating revenue.
From Harvard Business Review: Why Your Company Needs Revenue Operations to Drive Transformation
In an era with heightened customer needs, overlooking untapped insights may be costly for your organization.
The Starting Line For Sales, Marketing & RevOps
July 20, 2021: Database Management
From Zoominfo: Experts Weigh In on Data Hygiene Best Practices
Although most companies have now adopted some version of a data hygiene strategy, dirty data is still very much alive and well.
From Adweek: Building the Right Mar-Tech Stack for Your Organization
Today there are thousands of marketing tools and platforms that sit across various categories - data tracking, integration tools, and more. So why is marketing technology important?
From Harvard Business Review: Your Data Supply Chains Are Probably a Mess. Here's How to Fix Them.
Most organizations struggle with a few common issues that can be addressed by focusing on "data supply chain" management.
From MarketingDive: 50% of agencies outsource data amid persistent uniqueness, validity concerns
Take a look at the findings from Stirista's survey of agencies across the Ad tech and Martech worlds and their concerns for high-quality data, as half of respondents outsource their consumer and B2B data needs.
July 8, 2021: Sales Performance
From HubSpot: How to Increase Sales: Tips from HubSpot Experts
Are your sales numbers flat this year? Are you struggling to hit your goals? If so, you're not alone. With some expert advice, you'll be well on your way to crushing your sales goals.
From Sales Benchmark Index: 5 Ways Sales Leaders Create a Winning Culture
There are 5 ways sales leaders set a foundational sales culture that helps them attract and maintain a well-oiled sales machine.
From The Center for Sales Strategy: 6 Things the Best Salespeople Never Do
In order to fully understand what makes a high performing salesperson, it's helpful to recognize behaviors NOT exhibited by this elite group.
From tenfold: How to Overcome Sales Objections and the Fear of Rejection
Handling sales objections can make or break a future relationship with a sales prospect, and objections that aren't handled properly can prevent a future meeting or purchase.
June 23, 2021: Demand Generation/Lead Generation
From Zenmedia: 6 Step Guide to Launch An Email Drip Campaign (With Examples)
Email drip marketing comes down to providing your customers the right information at the right time. Here's a 6 step guide to launching an email drip campaign.
From Impulse Creative: What a Child's Nursery Rhyme Can Teach You About the Customer Buyer's Journey Stages
Just like any relationship, a relationship with your prospects takes time to grow. See how "Mary Had a Little Lamb" can be used as an analogy and detailed example for understanding the customer journey.
From Zoominfo: Three High-Impact Benefits of Email Marketing
Email is the most advanced medium of communication between marketers and their ideal customers. Here's why you should pay attention to the most measurable asset in your toolkit.
From CXL: How to Build a Beloved Product Without Email Marketing
It's important to know that this strategy isn't right for all businesses. You have to be strategic about what you replace it with to continue to be successful.
Set Your Teams Up For Success (On All Fronts)
June 9, 2021: Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From Sales Benchmark Index: A New Rep Profile: How Sales Leaders Are Evolving A-Players in 2021
What defines an A-player rep today? Here's what you need to understand about how the past year has shifted the approach to managing relationships and closing business.
From Gartner: Focus on Enablement and Critical Skills to Lead Sales Through Disruption
To quickly and effectively respond to disruption, focus on both dynamic buyer and seller enablement and building these new critical skills.
From Crayon: 6 Best Practices for Better Alignment Between Your Sales & Marketing Teams
When everyone is aligned, the business as a whole tends to grow. How do you do it? Here are 7 best practices for better alignment.
From G2: Sales Acceleration: If You're Not First, You're Last
Creating relationships with customers is crucial, but there are so many other tasks that come along with sales that can slow down the process of selling. That's why you need a sales acceleration strategy.
May 26, 2021: Go-to-Market Strategy
From OpenView: The 8 KPIs That Actually Matter - and How to Measure Them
There are dozens of metrics that can fall under the KPI umbrella. Cover the 8 KPIs that OpenView monitors closely, and how you can measure them, too.
From for Entrepreneurs: Clarity of Message: Why You Need A Great Message & How To Create It
How do you make your message simple when what you're offering is complex? This post provides information and exercises you can do to create a great positioning statement.
From Crayon: How to Create a Winning Brand Positioning Strategy
Take a deeper look at the essence of brand positioning and about the strategies you can use to help your product/service rise to the top.
May 11, 2021: Revenue Operations
From CXL: Marketing Integrations: The Challenge of Getting Your Marketing Tech Stack to Play Nice
Should you use best-of-breed tools or an all-in-one marketing suite? The trend has shifted to a preference for integrated suites.
From Demand Gen Report: B2B Orgs Turn To Third-Party Data, Strong Leadership To Fuel RevOps Engines
As B2B organizations evolve their strategies and become revenue focused, total alignment, dynamic datasets and strong leadership can ensure success.
From Impulse Creative: What is Revenue Operations, AKA RevOps?
The good news is your business is growing. The bad news is, you're not sure if you're ready for everything that comes with it. Your answers lie in adopting a RevOps mindset.
From HubSpot: The Importance of a CRM: Why Your Company Needs a CRM to Grow Better
CRMs are powerful tools that can help you expedite business growth. Here are 7 reasons why your company needs a CRM to grow better.
April 20, 2021: Data & Analytics
From Sales Benchmark Index: How Sales Leaders Activate Key Data to Drive Alignment
Prescription and predictiveness are the principles that sales leaders should frame up to leverage market insights and drive decisions that impact top-line growth.
From Gartner: The Future of Sales Analytics Promises More Commercial Impact
The future of sales analytics leverages intelligent applications and new data sources to drive more commercial impact. Learn what lies ahead.
From Harvard Business Review: Data Is Great -- But It's Not a Replacement for Talking to Customers
Many companies rely too much on big data and analytics in their hunt for strategic insights. They'd do better if they went out and talked to their customers.
From Zoominfo: Tackling Bad Data: How Poor Data Quality Impacts Your B2B Bottom Line
Businesses depend on data to fuel business growth. However, if that data isn't clean, your marketing and sales efforts take a hit.
Reduce Friction & Build Your Teams for Success
April 6, 2021: Demand Generation / Lead Generation
From HubSpot: Why Business Acumen is Key to Sales Success (And How to Get It)
Business acumen is a term often thrown around boardrooms and blog posts. HubSpot breaks down what it is, why it's important, and how you can develop it in this article.
From Forrester: Inside The Black Box: Designing Sensors To Decode B2B Buying Signals
To enable post-linear buying journeys, marketers must design programs and tactics that connect content and conversations across interactions to predict and respond to buyer needs in real time.
From Sales Benchmark Index: How Marketing Leaders Are Supporting Acquisition, Nurture, and Retention
It's more important than ever for Marketing Leaders to approach Revenue Marketing from a Customer Experience lens.
From Convince&Convert: How Marketers Are Optimizing Their Email Marketing, According to Research
Ascend2 and other research partners fielded the Email Marketing Optimization Survey and around 300 marketing professionals responded. Here are noteworthy insights from the study.
March 23, 2021: Demand Generation & Sales Enablement
From Gartner: How Marketing Can Better Sense and Respond to Customer Needs
In a recent Gartner survey, 90% of marketing leaders agreed that the marketing function needs to be more adaptive to shifts in customer needs. Learn how to better adapt here.
From CXL: Common B2B Challenges and How To Solve Them
CXL surveyed over 200+ B2B executives and marketing & sales leaders to find out what challenges they face. Here's what they learned and the steps you should take to put yourself in a position to succeed.
From Crayon: 5 Expert Tips for Improving Your Sales Enablement Strategy
It's often a challenge to get sales teams to adopt the resources being made for them. Here are the best tips for getting sales to use their sales enablement resources.
From InsightSquared: Chief Revenue Regrets: Relying on Reps to Provide Forecasting Deal Data
We all know who our best sales reps are, but do we really know what they are doing to be so effective? Most often the answer to this is no.
March 9, 2021: Sales Acceleration/Enablement & Go-to-Market Strategy
From CXL: Market Positioning: The Keys To Getting It Right
This article explores what market positioning is, how to position yourself effectively, and look at some examples from both established and up and coming brands.
From HubSpot: 15 Tried and True Ways to Improve Your Sales Skills
Professional development is essential for salespeople. To progress in your sales career, consider developing and refining the following skills.
From Harvard Business Review: How Savvy Midsize Firms Increase Sales in a Virtual World
What can leaders of midsized companies do to keep a personal touch in sales interactions? HBR found a number of midsized companies whose sales forces have been holding their own and what they've been doing.
From Inc.: Navy SEALs Use This 7-Step Process to Achieve Any Goal. You Can Too
Rob Roy, a 25-year veteran of the SEALs, lays out the 7-step approach SEALs use to tackle even the most daunting missions, so you can adapt it to achieve your own biggest goals.
February 23, 2021: Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From Crayon: How to Definitively Prove the Value of Sales Enablement
How do you prove the value of sales enablement? And how do you communicate that proof to your colleagues? Find out here.
From Forrester: What You Can't See Will Hurt You: Leveraging Digital Insights To Drive Sales
Even the best sales reps cannot win a deal they aren't aware of. In addition to working directly with the buyer to gain insights, sales should also use buying signals to identify need.
From Compt: Adapting to Remote Work: The Benefits, Challenges, and Keys to Long-term Success
This article covers the benefits and challenges of remote work, as well as the keys to having long-term success with remote work in your company.
From Gartner: 4 Strategies to Rev Up B2B Sales Growth in 2021
Gartner research shows that the key to accelerating revenue growth for B2B sales is a low-effort, digital buying experience that helps customers feel more confident about their decisions.
Increase Your Growth Velocity
February 9, 2021: Digital Evolution, Data Science & Learnings
From HubSpot: Should You Start a Business in Uncertain Times? What Research & Real Business Owners Say
Uncertain times may not hold back business owners after all. Here's what a handful of entrepreneurs said about their personal experiences with launching businesses in 2020.
From Harvard Business Review: Data Science and the Art of Persuasion
Despite the success stories, many companies aren't getting the value they could from data science. To be successful, you need these 6 talents.
From CXL: What I Learned Publishing 200+ Blog Posts on CXL
After posting 46 blogs and editing 156 more, Derek Gleason goes through what he's figured out in the process and what he failed to solve.
From Sales Benchmark Index: The Digital Evolution and Its Impact on Revenue Growth in 2021
More than 80% of CEOs feel "digital transformation" has become more urgent. Making the 2021 number is dependent on these capabilities - is your organization ready?
January 26, 2021: Demand Generation & Sales Enablement/Performance
From Zoominfo: How to Align Sales & Marketing - And Drive Revenue
Discord between marketing and sales departments is an age-old story. The good news is when they're working together, you win.
From MarketingDive: CMOs will be more cautious in 2021 with growth strategies, Gartner finds
The new year promises to be another year of disruption as CMOs grapple with competing priorities to drive sales growth. Most CMOs favor a more cautious approach.
From Harvard Business Review: How to Reach New Customers When You Can't Meet Them in Person
Many companies have deepened their relationships with existing customers during the pandemic. However, sales teams should not give up on finding new customers. This article offers tips on how to do that.
From SiriusDecisions: Can Your Sales Rep Be Influenced By Commission?
Compensation is important, but it is not always the most important sales motivator. Before you make any changes, look at these three areas.
January 12, 2021: Demand Generation & Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From Copyblogger: How to Write Killer Email Subject Lines for Sales
To achieve success with email marketing, there is one aspect you must nail for your campaign not to flop - your email subject line.
From Crayon: Competitive Intelligence Planning for 2021: 15 Questions to Answer in Your Annual Plan
When it comes to building your competitive intelligence program plan for the new year, these 15 questions will help you establish the foundation of a winning plan.
From CXL: The Should-How Fallacy (Or Why "Correct" Isn't "Useful")
Being right doesn't create value; empowering others to succeed does. Learn the difference between "should" and "how" to get your content where it needs to be.
From HubSpot: Marketing Trends to Watch in 2021, According to 21 Experts
To better understand what to expect or pay close attention to in 2021, HubSpot connected with other marketing experts for their perspective.
December 15, 2020: Revenue Operations, Demand Generation & Sales Performance
From The Harris Consulting Group: Why you need a Revenue Operations Team
If you're looking to understand and execute a revenue operations team in 2021, this post will provide the insights you need.
From Medium - Fluxx Studio Notes: 52 things I learned in 2020
Tom Whitwell is at it again this year, giving us the 52 things he learned in 2020. If you like "fun facts," this one's for you.
From Impulse Creative: The Customer Journey vs. The Buyer's Journey, What You Need to Know.
The customer and buyer journeys are two very different efforts. Understand the difference between the two and which one you need.
From Sales Benchmark Index: How CEOs Are Leading Their Sales Transformation
SBI recently surveyed 54 CEOs to understand how their FY20 revenue growth projections and sales and marketing spend have been impacted to determine how you can leverage this in your FY21 plans.
Foundational Business Resources
December 1, 2020: Sustainable Growth
From Harvard Business Review: Now Is the Time to Shake Up Your Sales Processes
Leaders often wait to implement major changes until a significant event forces them to do so. Four issues need attention now, as changes will only get harder to implement as time passes.
From Jacques Corby-Tuech: Marketers are Addicted to Bad Data
Modern marketing is all about data. Most of us don't understand how data is collected, how these mechanisms work and where/how they don't work.
From HubSpot: Growth Opportunities Exist in 2021: Here's How to Find Them, According to HubSpot's Chief Customer Officer
HubSpot Research recently published findings to help sales leaders think about what changes they need to make when planning for next year.
From Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute: 3 Things You Need to Know for a Successful AI Implementation
Technology is not a solution, it's an enabler and an accelerator. How do you implement AI tech the right way? Uncover the success factors here.
November 10, 2020: Business Success
From Harvard Business Review: Is Your Marketing Organization Ready for What's Next?
Marketing has never been more complex. Today's world has transformed how the marketing function must work, requiring that it become more agile, interdependent, and accountable for driving growth.
From SiriusDecisions: Should It Stay or Should It Go? Getting Alignment on Martech Decisions
If you are circling around whether some of your technologies should stay or go, here are some questions to ask about each to bring more clarity.
From LinkedIn - Geoffrey Moore: Zone Management: Mind Your Metrics - Hard and Soft
Enterprises undertake diverse sets of responsibilities, each which needs to be managed in its own way. When organized properly, this results in four distinctly different zones of activity.
From CXL: 11 Things People Believe But Shouldn't
People often choose to believe in things that are just not true. Here are 11 things that many of us in marketing believe, but shouldn't.
October 27, 2020: Go-to-Market Strategy
From Gartner: Future of Sales 2025: Why B2B Sales Needs a Digital-First Approach
Over the next 5 years, an even greater rise in digital interactions between suppliers and buyers will break traditional sales models.
From Sales Benchmark Index: The 4 Pillars of Flawless Marketing and Sales Alignment
The marketing and sales alignment surround 4 key pillars: big bets, the customer, process, and accountability.
From HubSpot: 5 Ways Go-to-Market Strategies Will Change in the Post-Pandemic Economy
To help businesses navigate their digital transformation journey with success, HubSpot put together a list of 5 key ways in which GTM strategies are changing and how to adapt to each.
October 13, 2020: Database Management, Sales Acceleration/Enablement & Demand Generation
From Zoominfo: Your Guide to a Healthy Contact Database [Infographic]
Just as a healthy human requires certain things to thrive, so does your sales and marketing contact database - specifically these four things.
From Forrester: A Look Ahead: What Sales Operations Leaders Must Prepare For In 2021
To help sales operations leaders plan for 2021, Forrester published their planning assumptions, describing 5 key trends to prepare for.
From ProfitWell: Customer Expectations at All-time Highs: How Companies Can Keep Up
As companies move to SaaS & subscription-based models, a new customer-centric paradigm is rising with a new focus on customer expectations.
From CXL: The Science of Storytelling & Memory and The Impact on CRO
If your website isn't converting, it's likely the story you're telling through the marketing funnel isn't resonating on an emotional level.
Strong, Smart Growth Resources
September 29, 2020: Revenue Operations, Go-to-Market Strategy & Sales Enablement
From Harvard Business Review: 5 Myths About Strategy
In studying strategy, there are 5 pernicious myths to be aware of. This article goes through why each are plausible and why each are wrong.
From FunnelCake: The RevOps Framework
Over the past 12 months FunnelCake interviewed over 100 B2B leaders and used the data to create the definitive framework for Revenue Operations.
From HubSpot: Insight Selling: The 8-Slide Framework for a Better Pitch
Today's buyer needs you to add value beyond the research they can conduct on their own. It's time to switch to Insight Selling.
August 31, 2020: Database Management
From Sales Benchmark Index: Considering Technology-Driven Sales Prospecting? Examine the Pros and Cons of Automation
Weigh the pros and cons outlined here to decide whether automating your prospecting process is right for your organization.
From Zoominfo: 7 Ways Dirty Data is Hurting Your Bottom Line
Using dirty data to fuel your business initiatives is like putting the wrong type of fuel in your car; you're doing serious damage to your engine.
From ProfitWell: Customer Acquisition Vs. Retention: Where Are Your Dollars Best Spent?
Customer acquisition vs. customer retention -- which one is better? That's a misleading question -- both are important.
From SiriusDecisions: Are You Managing Your Sales Data or Is It Managing You?
A lack of accurate real-time data stunts an organizations ability to implement dynamic guided selling.
August 17, 2020: Go-to-Market Strategy & Sales Acceleration/Enablement
From Harvard Business Review: 4 Questions Sales Leaders Should Be Asking Right Now
There is a new abnormal at work right now. Sales leaders are challenging conventional wisdom as they look for answers to these questions.
From Sales Benchmark Index: Data Science and Sales Operations: Driving Greater Predictability Together in Uncertain Times
Learn how best-in-class Sales Operations functions are leveraging Data Science teams for predictive revenue insights.
From Greg Kogan's Blog: No New Categories
The secret behind success doesn't come by creating new categories, rather it comes from competing in existing ones.
From Visual Capitalist: 5 Ways to Build a $100 Million Company
Building a successful company takes more than hype, publicity, or fundraising skills.
July 22, 2020: Sales Acceleration/Enablement & Revenue Operations
From Mike Weinberg's Blog: You Are Building Relationships with Prospects Who Have Yet to Respond
Feel like you're not making any progress with your (or your teams') initial outreach efforts? Think again.
From Gartner: Forget what you thought you know about B2B buyers - see six things that characterize the B2B buyer of 2020
Let's put it this way, if common wisdom drove results - results would be a whole lot easier to attain. Gartner busts some important myths here.
From HubSpot: Why Your B2B Company Needs A Revenue Operations Strategy
RevOps is a hot topic these days, here's why.
From Harvard Business Review: Want to Be More Productive? Try Doing Less.
We've been taught that if we want more we need to do more. But what if we've been taught wrong?
Eliminate Friction & Drive Results
