Wednesday, December 19th, 2018

Can one little word change marketing and sales success?

A new study highlights the power of “you” versus “we” phrasing in your messaging. When sending out prospecting messages or presenting solutions to prospects and customers, most marketing and salespeople tend to “we, we, we” all over themselves. No, this article isn’t about losing control of bodily function. It’s about word choice and whether a single word or pronoun-based reference… 

Tuesday, December 18th, 2018

Value propositions: the sales and marketing interface

I reviewed two areas of literature before doing the research which covered sales-marketing interface (SMI) and value propositions. Sales-marketing interface SMI literature primarily focused on “The extent to which activities carried out by the two are supportive of each other” (Rouzies, et al. 2005). SMI research has tended to focus on sales and marketing relations as an end in itself…. 

Friday, December 15th, 2017

Different sales and marketing thought-worlds

Which cross-functional integration mechanisms improve the relationship between sales and marketing functions? The article by Douek on the importance of intra-collaboration between sales teams in complex sales situations in the previous edition of the Journal has highlighted the need to revisit the thorny subject of the internal relationship between sales and marketing functions. Previous research has established that where there… 

Saturday, April 22nd, 2017

Transforming sales is not enough

If you’re serious about growth, transform marketing too. A few years ago, I was part of the management team that rapidly grew a mature outsourcing business in just one year, while increasing profitability too. Our strategy was to shift from being a reactive business, waiting for RFPs to arrive, to a proactive one targeting the specific accounts that would deliver… 

Saturday, January 28th, 2017

Collaborating to change

Some 18 months ago, BT Global Services set out on a major programme of sales and marketing transformation. We talk to Chris Blundell about the story so far. There was a time when Chris Blundell spent his time driving from customer to customer in a yellow van – back in the day Blundell was a telecom engineer. Now, however, his… 

Saturday, September 3rd, 2016

Re-sharpening the customer focus in B2B markets: understanding selling as “marketing in action”

In today’s ultra-competitive markets it is imperative that salespeople work to continuously sharpen their customer focus. By comparing the new model of personal selling with the marketing process, this article provides an agenda for helping to make it happen. Introduction Despite the rise of online selling, in many markets – especially B2B – personal selling remains a critical component of… 

Thursday, April 7th, 2016

Identifying your ideal customers

Bob Apollo on Building Scalable Businesses Market segmentation has traditionally been based on demographic factors such as company size, sector and location. But these simple characteristics are hopelessly inadequate predictors of which specific organisations you should focus your marketing and sales energies on. That’s because in any complex B2B sales environment, there will be a set of specific unique-to-you structural,… 

Saturday, October 31st, 2015

Align or die?

How do we re-engineer the sales and marketing interface for the benefit of our customers? Just as I sat down to write this article my email pinged. I tried to ignore it as I’d just come back from an excellent “Sales-Mind“ workshop that reminded me of the foolishness of multitasking. Then I saw the title – “Brands failing to align… 

Monday, July 6th, 2015

Crossing the Chasm

Bob Apollo, Managing Partner at Inflexion-Point and Journal columnist says: “I’ve been inspired by Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, which many regard as the bible for technology marketers, and very relevant to selling”. +

Tuesday, April 7th, 2015

“Crossing the Chasm” revisited

When Geoffrey Moore published the first edition of Crossing the Chasm over 20 years ago, it rapidly became a B2B sales and marketing classic – rated by Inc. magazine as one of the top-ten marketing books of all time. Moore’s focus on the behavioural chasm that exists between innovators and pragmatist buyers was a revelation to a generation of technology…