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96% of CMOs are excited about AI, yet 71% express anxiety and 80% believe AI could put their own role at risk. Artificial intelligence could unlock up to $90 billion in improved marketing returns in the US alone, according to new research. Yet, fewer than 10% of organisations have successfully scaled AI across marketing or captured AI’s true value across… 

What defines a “supplier-switch” moment for customers has shifted for a third time in a decade.  Rising buyer expectations and the acceleration of AI capabilities are driving a wedge between B2B market growth leaders and laggards. This divide may prove to be deeper than both the consumerisation of business buying and the surge in e-commerce self-serve that emerged during the… 

Why hiring great salespeople is a negotiation between two parties who both need to do their homework – it’s definitely not a one-way selection process. Anyone involved in sales recruitment for high-impact roles complains about the same thing: there just aren’t enough outstanding salespeople to go round. It’s not a new problem. Indeed, the underlying scarcity of genuinely top-performing salespeople… 

How sales and marketing can thrive together in the AI age. Sales and marketing have always shared the same ultimate objective: driving growth and revenue. Yet the relationship between the two departments hasn’t always been seamless, and it remains an issue even in 2026. When sales and marketing operate in silos, inconsistent messaging and misaligned goals can cause friction and… 

Why the right fit is vital for both employer and candidate. It seems like an obvious truism, but finding the right fit is vital for both employer and the candidate when it comes to hiring enterprise account executives and other top sales talent. Yet, recruiters sometimes appear to forget this. The process of hiring top-level sales talent is definitely not… 

The myth of the lone wolf salesperson is killing careers – that’s why the Institute of Sales Professionals has created a mentoring programme. The “lone wolf” is a romantic, outdated notion that isolates talent, stifles growth, and leaves the next generation to learn through a brutal cycle of trial and error, the Institute suggests. “We believe there is a better… 

Warwick Business School has outlined five B2B sales strategies to help businesses thrive in today’s business environment. 1 Turn price transparency into a weapon Proactive transparency, particularly early in the relationship with a customer, actually drives better commercial outcomes. Early cost disclosure led to approximately $1,400 more in backend profits per customer, according to a 2021 paper by by Michael… 

Some 65% of chief marketing officers say advances in AI will dramatically change the CMO role in the next two years, a recent Gartner survey reveals. Yet only 32% say significant changes are needed to the CMO profile and skill set, according to the business and technology insights company. Conducted from August through October 2025 among 402 senior marketing leaders… 

Use this checklist to assess your current interface with marketing – and the customer. If you can’t answer “yes” to the following questions or don’t know the answers, it may be time to revisit the alignment between sales and marketing in your organisation – and your customer focus. 1. Go-to-market strategy 2. Buyer confidence and customer focus 3. KPIs, accountability… 

For businesses to thrive, sales and marketing need to reforge their relationship. I’ve been writing about sales and sales management since the mid-1980s – that’s around 40 years. For almost 20 years, I was heading up a marketing communications agency. So, I’ve observed the sales and marketing relationship from both perspectives. During much of that time it is fair to… 

ABM Is no longer a marketing tactic; it’s a commercial operating model. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has an identity crisis, but not because it is losing relevance. Quite the opposite. ABM has become so commercially potent that describing it as a marketing approach is no longer accurate.  In nine years of running the Global ABM Conference, we have witnessed ABM evolve… 

What if marketing, sales, sales enablement, and customer success align around a mandate to eliminate barriers to buyer confidence and ensure customers achieve their desired business. There’s a growing recognition that the challenge in complex B2B sales isn’t just about creating demand or building pipeline. The challenge lies in ensuring that we eliminate the barriers to buyer confidence – before,… 

As the Institute celebrates surpassing 10,000 members, it has also initiated an important leadership transition to drive its next phase of growth. Guy Lloyd has stepped down as Managing Director to focus on the Institute’s long-term strategic ambition: securing Chartered status for the sales profession. With chartership central to ISP’s vision of sales being universally recognised as a highly skilled and… 

The Institute of Sales Professionals has recently achieved two major milestones: just months after celebrating its 10th anniversary it also passed the 10,000-membership mark. This reflects the growing recognition of sales as a profession and the increasing importance of professional standards, ethical practice, and continuous development within the field. “To all those who care about selling professionally and have joined… 

The typical buying decision now includes 13 internal stakeholders and nine external influencers, with that number rising for more complex or strategic purchases, according to research and advisory firm Forrester. And, while generative AI is fundamentally reshaping how business buyers discover, evaluate, and purchase products and services, it has also become something of a “double-edged sword” in the buying process…. 

With AI agents poised to reshape sales, sales leaders must rethink strategies to unlock true value, business and technology insights company, Gartner warns. By 2028, AI agents will outnumber human sellers by ten times, yet fewer than 40% of sellers will report that AI agents have improved their productivity, it claims. As AI agents become ubiquitous, Gartner advises that sales… 

20 years on from HBR’s seminal “Ending the War” paper, how can business leaders align sales and marketing to maximise market performance? When Philip Kotler, Neil Rackham, and Sujay Krishnaswamy published “Ending the War Between Sales and Marketing” in Harvard Business Review (2006), they gave managers a language for an enduring organisational tension. Sales and marketing, they argued, were structurally… 

This edition focuses on the importance of personal branding in sales. Here are five top tips each for salespeople and their managers. Sales Tips 101 From a salesperson’s perspective Sales Management Tips 101 From a sales manager’s perspective: +

Personal branding as a competitive advantage in a world of AI and automation. Personal branding has been a fashionable term for some years now and it is often taken as something “we all need to do”. Yet, very often we don’t stop and ask why. For this reason, personal branding seldom has the strategic attention that it perhaps deserves. In… 

Why your personal brand is built one conversation at a time. When social media consultants talk about “personal brand” many instinctively think of LinkedIn. They talk about polished profiles, regular posts, and carefully curated content. There is no doubt that a strong digital presence can raise visibility and credibility. It might make potential customers more willing to respond to our…