Most marketing communication budgets have either held the same or declined over the last few years.  The question today is not so much “how much do I have as a budget,” BUT what is the best mix to get the optimum return! Note: this article is focused on business to business not business to consumer [...]

Recommendations for sales people on how to use LinkedIn to generate sales.

The expression “You get what you pay for” actually has a deep and comprehensive meaning in the B2B marketing world. The following is a B2B marketer’s guide on what needs to be considered when pricing a product or service.  1-     Understand the goals and go to market (GTM) strategy for the enterprise and /or the [...]

A posting that illustrates the change in marketing activities used for lead generation/sales process from a few years ago to today.

In a previous posting I talked about Five Myths for the direct sales force. This posting will discuss five major misconceptions about the indirect channel (reseller, distributors, partners and etc.).  Five major indirect channel misconceptions:  1-      Partners, resellers, etc. are all alike. Nothing could be further from the truth! The major impression is that most [...]

On the first day of sales, marketing gave to me (the sales force) an outstanding brand! On the second day of sales, marketing gave to me two value propositions and an outstanding brand! On the third day of sales, marketing gave to me, three new market segments, two value propositions and an outstanding brand! On [...]

For those who are creating a web site and want to gather data on how your                  Trivia Corner : Where did the expression”Things are tied up in red tape” come from? Last week’s answer: Jazz musicians during the 20s & 30s called getting a gig in a town or city an apple. If you got a gig in [...]

This is the eight in a series regarding Sales Channels Last time we discussed the scenario of a direct sales channel and switching or adding an indirect channel. The key issues were: a complete strategy, reseller selection and a reseller program(s). This posting is about adding a Direct Marketing function. Again, like the last discussion, [...]

  This is the seventh in a series regarding Sales Channels   One reader, who felt that the scorecard was a good guideline in defining the appropriate channels for many enterprises, wanted some insight on what should be considered in changing/ adding another channel, as her current channel is underperforming.  Well when the reader asks, [...]

In my series about different sales distribution models, I talked about the direct model (ones own sales force), indirect (reseller/distributors) and direct marketing (emails, bloging, etc) along with their pros and cons (see our blog for more detail, www.firealarmmarketing.com/blog).   Noting that generalization is always dangerous, I will ignore it and state that if one [...]