One of the biggest mistakes we can make in marketing is to go after all prospects in the same way. Companies that understand this are embracing Account-Based Marketing [ABM] and are learning to look at their prospects through distinct lenses. For a long time, marketers have chosen to use outbound or inbound marketing exclusively. Whereas an outbound approach once took precedence, just in the last 15 years, we’ve seen the pendulum swing to inbound. It…
You may have been hearing the phrase thought leadership quite a bit lately. And you may be wondering what on earth is behind that buzzy marketing lingo. In this blog we’ll explain what it is, how much you need, and why it’s a critical part of your sales strategy. Thought Leader /THôt ˈlēdər/ – A thought leader is an individual or organization that is recognized as an authority, and whose expertise in a specific field…
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Over the past several years I have written about the need for marketing and sales to be on the same team – as I am a believer it is a key attribute of a company’s success. There are some who believe this is a problem that has been put to rest. Unfortunately, that is not often what we experience when we work…
Type “sales book” into the Amazon search window and you’ll get nearly 2,300,000 results. But every once in a while, a book comes along that rocks the sales world. That’s the case with Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount. It’s a practical guide on how to do the most important – and the most difficult – thing in sales: prospecting. Recently, April Williams, President of North Star Marketing, Inc. (NSM), sat down with Ted Williams, NSM’s…
When it comes to marketing and sales, two things have always been clear. Marketing owns making someone aware of your company and sparking their interest. Sales owns closing the deal. But who owns what happens between sparking some interest and closing the deal has always been a big black hole. Recently, I read an article by Marketo that showed how the sales funnel needs to be restructured and renamed the Revenue Cycle. The key takeaway…
This may seem like a no brainer to you but in most companies today – marketing and sales are far from being team players. Several years ago, we began to see a painful trend for marketing and it concerned us to see how disempowered and unsuccessful many of the CMOs we spoke with felt. We spoke with 150 heads of marketing and uncovered what was at the heart of CMO’s high turnover and lack of…
The conversation isn’t new but the struggle still exists, sales and marketing are still not aligned. Who doesn’t want shorter sales cycles, lower market-entry costs, and a reduction in cost of sales? One of the many reasons I like working at North Star is because we are an agency that truly believes Sales and Marketing Departments working together is Smart, Creative and the results are real! I have had the great privilege of working with some…
To transform a vision into reality, you need to have the confidence that things are getting done. To gain this confidence, a culture of accountability is critical. Building a culture of accountability isn’t easy. Today, accountability has become one of the biggest challenges that business leaders face. But without it, driving success will be a challenge. According to Greg Bustin, author of Accountability: The Key to Driving a High Performance Culture, “Lack of accountability is the single…
Today’s marketing allows you to build your pipeline in ways we never could have five years ago. There have been people over the years who have promoted a singular tactic to drive sales but where we are settling in is exactly where we should be – looking at integrated tactics that marketing and sales can tackle together. It is called Account Based Marketing [ABM] and, if done right, it is a game-changer for companies. It…
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