Tuesday, July 28th, 2026
2026 DMA awards open
The 2026 DMA Awards opened for entries on 7 July. The Data & Marketing Association (DMA) is inviting brands, agencies, charities, marketing and technology partners to submit the campaigns, programmes and innovations that have defined the past year. Now in its 46th year, the DMA Awards is among the UK’s longestrunning marketing awards, recognising work that combines strategic thinking, outstanding…
Tuesday, July 28th, 2026
Unify tech around a single view of the buyer
In today’s tech world, when it comes to prospecting, the strongest performers unify channels, workflows, and reporting around a single view of the buyer. However, fragmentation and lack of integration is holding sales teams back, according to a whitepaper from B2B outreach specialists Sopro. The Brighton-based lead-gen company argues that, while sales and marketing organisations now use a growing mix…
Tuesday, July 28th, 2026
Journal’s come home
The International Journal of Sales Transformation has reverted to its original ownership, following a year under the auspices of the Institute of Sales Professionals. Founding editor Nick de Cent says: “I’d like to thank the ISP for their input to the Journal and offering us a home for a year. We are excited now to be going forward as an…
Thursday, July 16th, 2026
News Roundup
Journal’s come home The International Journal of Sales Transformation has reverted to its original ownership, following a year under the auspices of the Institute of Sales Professionals. Founding editor Nick de Cent says: “I’d like to thank the ISP for their input to the Journal and offering us a home for a year. We are excited now to be going…
Thursday, July 16th, 2026
Another B2B reckoning
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…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
A question of (purchase) complexity
In a world where technology has outpaced the theory, how do we define a new operating framework for sales and marketing? Here is a question that, in my view at least, should not still need asking in 2026: what is the actual difference between marketing and sales? Ask ten senior commercial leaders and you will get ten different answers. Ask…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Sales Leadership 101 – Are sales and marketing aligned around the customer?
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…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
A game of two halves
Are sales and marketing functions strategically aligned to optimise business? We asked a range of experts – practitioners, academics and consultants – six questions about the interaction of sales and marketing in a B2B environment. We sought their views on how well sales and marketing organisations typically collaborate to support the aims of a business. We asked them how the…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Building bridges between sales and marketing
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…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
A strategic approach to ABM
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…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
A critical new mandate for marketing
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,…
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Buying groups growing larger and procurement becoming more influential says analyst
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….
Friday, March 13th, 2026
Beyond the “war”: 20 years of research on the sales and marketing interface
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…
Monday, November 24th, 2025
Selling strategic investments
How to use capital budgeting as a sales methodology. Abstract Capital budgeting is a fundamental process in corporate finance involving the evaluation and selection of long-term investments that are in line with a company’s strategic objectives. When employed as a sales methodology, capital budgeting helps sales representatives present their products and services as strategic investments to potential clients. This approach…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Buyers need human salespeople as guides in complex B2B environments to escape preconceptions
In today’s B2B landscape, buyers conduct significant research and vendor comparisons prior to ever contacting a salesperson. At the same time, vendors assume that buyers are likely to be confident in understanding the problems they are trying to solve, which can lead to sellers failing to conduct a robust discovery process once they do get involved. More paradoxically, however, buyers…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Buyers prefer self-service, but choose sellers for key tasks
Buyers favour online self-service tools over sellers when searching for general information and learning new things. However, for buying tasks requiring contextual intelligence, such as determining whether a product or service fits their company’s needs, buyers prefer to seek seller input. That’s according to Alice Walmesley, Director Analyst in the Gartner Sales Practice. “Instead of offering generic information that buyers…
Monday, September 29th, 2025
Most B2B buyers will prefer human interaction to AI by 2030 – Gartner
While AI-driven solutions offer speed, efficiency, and convenience, especially in the early stages of the sales process, recent analysis suggests that the demand for genuine human engagement is far from diminishing. In fact, by 2030, Gartner predicts that 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritise human interaction over AI, prompting organisations to rethink how they structure their…
Thursday, January 9th, 2025
Omnichannel, AI and the future of B2B sales
How are B2B buyer expectations changing and where is B2B sales headed? In the previous edition of the Journal, we ran a story on McKinsey’s ninth global B2B Pulse report (released 12 September), which questioned 4,000 B2B decision-makers across eight major industries. This identified how B2B suppliers are responding to “consumer-like” purchasing demands from buyers. Here we talk to the…
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024
B2B e-commerce unseats in-person sales for second year running
Business-to-business suppliers are under pressure to respond to “consumer-like” purchasing demands as buyers continue to shift the way they make purchases, a new global survey released on 12 September reveals. At the same time, buyers feel more comfortable with remote and selfserve spending on big-ticket items this year than they did in 2022, according to consultants McKinsey & Co. “E-commerce,…
Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
5 essential steps for targeting customers
Researching prospects can be a time-consuming activity but is essential to success. Used judiciously, AI can help streamline the process. Then it’s time to make contact… See Sales Tips 101 “Opening a conversation” +