Sign Word for Sales Teams Later

I’m not sure how to simplify it down to just one thing. However, as a current IBMer with very low job-satisfaction, here’s what I can tell you:IBM has stopped valuing its people. I’ve seen dozens of brilliant minds leave IBM due to insufficient compensation, growth, & appreciation. IBM has overestimated the loyalty of its workers, replacing raises with empty praise. As a Senior Developer, I make less than $50k (ref: avg high school teachers earns $56k).IBM’s sales teams have traded long-term gains for short-term “wins.” Panicked to generate revenue & job security, they’re selling deals that we can’t possibly deliver: promising impossible timelines; under-staffing projects; over-selling inexperienced developers. IBM’s clients aren’t foolish and, similarly, are leaving IBM.In short, IBM is driving away its most valuable resources — its clients & its people — with myopic, “get-rich-quick” schemes — and no one’s buying it. IBM needs to get real, get honest, and re-think its plan. My thoughts:Cut the fat: fire the do-nothings who’ve made it to the top & are just sitting there. Sure, they should be rewarded for their years of hard work, but IBM can’t afford to pay people who don’t pull their weight.Use that extra income to reward & promote those developers who are working late nights, weekends, & holidays to deliver the insane deals sold by the sales team.Stop lying to the clients. It’s not working. Even if the client misses a detail or two in the initial signing, that fact will come up later… and no one likes to be burned. Word gets around (and has gotten around): a few short victories won by dishonesty will warn future consumers to stay back.Alright, that’s all, I’m done. Hopefully IBM gets it’s act together soon. Either way I’m leaving in Feb.

Let’s begin with the most straight-forward answer to this question: NO. Automation is not here to kill digital marketing and make something brand new!But you can say, automation is the key to a newer approach to digital marketing. Let me break it for you.Previously, the normal marketing cycle would be something like this: You get “leads”, you try to ‘remarket them to’ (i.e. influence them in any way) and then pass it to sales team.With the advent of marketing automation tools, now there are many more stages before the sales team take lead. In other words, sales conversation happen quite later in the buyer’s cycle, because marketing is more about nurturing the leads and generating genuine interest before sales conversation happen.It is more like giving your sales rep 10 quality and genuinely interested prospects to talk to than handing over 20 leads without any background check!You can put this whole thing like this: Marketing automation is a boon to digital marketers who are constantly trying to capture leads and fill the pipeline for the sales team with interested leads. Gone are the days when sales and marketing used to function separately. Because that actually incurred more business loss than you can think of. Imagine your marketing team signNowing put to prospective leads with one set of idea, promoting your business aligned to that concept and generating enough interest in that lead to go the ‘buy’ button. And then your sales rep takes over, with no idea of what your marketing people talked about. Suddenly, your sales rep tells something way different that what the lead was told prior to that conversation. End result? You lose this lead (and many more like this) making way for a huger loss.But not with an automation tool. A marketing automation tool bridges this gap between the two core teams, making it possible to nurture leads in a more personalized and relevant way. And one tool that is genuinely making a difference is Aritic PinPoint. This is a full-stack marketing automation tool catering to B2B customers. And no, it is not killing digital marketing!Let’s see how automation is leveraging digital marketing as a whole using Aritic PinPoint as a reference here:Marketing has become customer-centric. It is all about what you customers want, how they want, and when. To be honest, its more like dishing out the right information at the right time to the right lead.Aritic PinPoint has intuitive landing pages, option to add gated videos, and enables progressive profiling which makes quality lead capturing much more seamless. (I am talking about Organic Leads here). Gated video ensures you capture lead information from those genuinely interested in your video content. You manage to trigger enough interest to urge them to fill a quick form to continue accessing that content piece. On the other hand, progressive profiling is about asking questions that are related to your leads’ interests and demands.With dynamic contact list segmentation, Aritic PinPoint buckets your leads according to their demographics, website and app behaviour, buyer’s stage, and events. This simplifies your digital marketing efforts because you can now run targeted campaigns that will give you more optimum results.Whenever I used to discuss about digital marketing, I found people more inclined towards email marketing. So, here’s how automation is improving your email campaigns. I’ve already told you about lead segmentation. Aritic PinPoint allows you to design your own email templates that are device responsive. You can create and schedule automated drip campaigns based on your lead behaviour. Add to that, automated email workflow designing makes the task much more easier. Then comes the autoresponders for repetitive emails, and re-engagement emails for those leads who were once active but now they somehow lost interest.If you’ve noticed so far, all the automation features are customer-centric and behaviour-based.Digital marketing inevidently alludes to social media marketing. True. And Aritic PinPoint clearly has it included. You see, we’ve come past the time when we could focus on just one channel or require multiple people for each digital channel. Aritic PinPoint offers multi-channel marketing approach wherein you can connect with your leads and customers via SMS campaigns, landing pages, targeted drip push notifications, emails, and social media channels. You can create all these campaigns using the easy campaign builder on Aritic PinPoint. Here’s how a drip push notification campaign looks like:Next comes the gap bridging between sales and marketing. Features like lead behaviour tracking, lead source tracking, and lead scoring helps in creating a buyer’s persona and also spot the potential leads. With lead behaviour tracking, it is possible to understand the buying pattern of a lead, and by assigning score to each lead (including minus scores) you can know which are the most active leads. Most active leads = most interested leads.Backed with buyer’s purchasing details and browsing history, your sales rep can have a clear idea what will convince that lead the most. This means your sales rep talks to those leads who are genuinely interested, thereby increasing the conversion rates. (Yes, Aritic PinPoint has all these features).There’s so much more to Aritic PinPoint automation tool than these, especially the enterprise exclusive features like dedicated account manager, role-based access control, data security, single sign-on, and more. Other features include dynamic content, mobile marketing, detailed analytics and reports, and account-based marketing.Lastly, Aritic PinPoint has a wide range of integrations with various popular CMS, CRMs, websites and apps, social media platforms, and plugins.Automation is neither killing nor replacing digital marketing. If you are not yet convinced, try taking a demo of Aritic PinPoint or create a free account and experience the new-age marketing.Hope this helps :)

It was a September evening.I was studying biology. I was not actually studying but was pretending to study and thinking about my girlfriend.I was 14. It was my first relationship and I was darn excited about that.Suddenly my father entered the room and went to sit on a chair behind my table. His position was such that he was watching my back while I was studying.During those days, it was normal for my parents to come and sit in my room while I was studying. I assume they've come to check that only.Then my father asked me something.Dad: Do you have a girlfriend?Me: No.And there was a silence for couple of seconds.And then he said something which is horrific for any middle class Indian teenager.I am 45. You're 14. Who are you kidding son?I could feel the anger in his voice.I didn't have guts to turn around and face him. I've been caught.Suddenly he stuck again.So exchanging love letters huh? Is this why you go to school?Now I was horrified. I wanted to run into my mom’s arms and cry.Stop doing that bullshit and study. No girl will help you if you fail.And he left the room.After he left, mom entered. She kept a poker face.Throw all the love letters you have. You might have written some as well right? Tell her to throw it away and stop this nonsense.It was scary.It was awkward.I had to call my then girlfriend to throw every letter and I did the same.Everytime my father came in front of me after that for next few months, I couldn't look into his eyes.I was ashamed.For 3 days after the incident, our dinner table was silent like anything.It was awkward.

I’ve gone to car lots/dealerships with many of my top customers as a favor…. they’d buy me dinner & a beer and I’d go looking at vehicles with them for a few hours.Being an ASE certified MASTER tech since 1990 when I was 19 years old and was just shy of achieving my 1st degree (Associate’s in Automotive & Diesel Technology) as I had started as a helper in my Dad’s shop at 13, was working as the clean-up “boy”, pushed in dead cars, rode my bicycle to the parts store but more importantly began to watch everything he did incredibly closely to the point I was able to acquire my PA State Inspect...

Edit: Liberal arts IS the traditional higher educational studies track take!It was a lot of just random decision making on my part to be honest. I panicked and chose philosophy when they didn’t let me be an economics major.Like, I went into the registrar, they told me I couldn’t be an economics major because of a course requirement, and I went out into the waiting room, signed in again to be put in the queue, opened up a US News World Report (University edition — this is before smartphones were any good), saw that philosophy majors did fairly well when it came to law school entrance, and came back to change my major to philosophy….10 minutes later.The registrar building made me frustrated. I then went back to my shitty dorm and cried. I took a walk. My life had fallen apart by my measure. I was a bio major with high hopes of medical school: would’ve been young to go to med school, too, just like my dad. Now I was a philosophy major?! The most bullshit of all bullshit majors. Might as well be basket weaving, I thought.I was good at philosophy, and it turned into a love of mine. I almost went to graduate school after I graduated.I also took all the pre-reqs for medical school. I had a science/math GPA of 3.63. I really like school.But medical school freaked me out after I took the MCAT. For personal reasons.I work in sales now. I’m good at it. The store I work in is #1 in the region (I live in S FL — it’s densely populated). We must have always done fairly well, and I’d like to think it’s no mistake that the conversion rates have about doubled since I’ve worked there from about 9% to 15%. It may just be the holidays, though, and our sales team is solid. There’s a mix of us, and so whatever personality a person wants to get along with is there.I have never sold anything in my life and followed training word for word.I’m still learning, but I’ve encountered more success than I ever expected. I was terrified of going into sales again.People say I’m doing well. I’m encouraged by that, but I have a long way to go.

This story is about me when I was that sales woman telling lies. Once, when I was 21 and selling encyclopedias in London, I became very successful at ‘negative selling’ and made a fortune. I was at the bottom rung of the pyramid scheme for a couple of days then soon promoted and had my team of four people under me. When they sold something I got a percentage. Then I was promoted again to having several teams, with their team members under me, and getting a percentage of everything they sold.So several years later, I used this knowledge and experience when I was working in an art gallery. It was my job to take the money for the many work shops that went on there every week, plan the lectures, organize the openings and display the works of art in the shows.One day, I was in the gallery on my own. It was before the next show was to take place and hundreds of paintings were lined up on the floor against the walls waiting for me to sort them out. An elderly couple walked in. They immediately headed for the most expensive painting in the show and pounced on it. ‘How much is that?’ the man asked.I told him it was $600.00 - which is rather a lot for amateur artwork. They looked at each other, said thanks, and walked on around the gallery. Then they came back and took another look at the painting, and I could see the $$$ signs in their eyes. They talked to one another again, but this time they didn’t walk away.So using my negative selling techniques, I told them I really shouldn’t have let them in because the show hadn’t been hung. (This made them feel very privileged). Then I told them that none of the paintings were for sale yet anyway.Then the man asked, ‘What if we wanted to buy that painting?’ I told him he couldn’t buy it because it was still on the floor. They were quite miffed, and suddenly in for a fight. ‘Surely. it would be alright to buy it, I’m sure the artist wouldn’t mind.’So I told them that it was a very large painting, and they probably wouldn’t have room for it in their house. (What! Wouldn’t have room for it in their house! What cheek. They weren’t going to let me think that, even if they lived in an attic). ‘Oh, no we could easily find room for it,’ the man said, ‘We could put it over the fireplace, couldn’t we, Dear,’ he said, turning to his wife for confirmation.Then in for the kicker. ‘It’s a very expensive painting,’ I said, looking around. ‘We have a lot of other nice paintings around the gallery that are much cheaper’. (What! They weren’t about to let me think they couldn’t afford something they wanted. And the word ‘cheap’ added a definite sting to it).So the man signNowed into his pocket, took out his wallet and said. ‘We’ll take it, and say thanks to the artist for us’.

We arm ourselves with all of the sales and marketing tools below and our share price is outperforming all other public SaaS vendors over the last two years.Marketing AutomationFirst you need to be in the game - so you need a great marketing capability to get your name in the mix - so that buyers will contact you, so  that buyers will have heard of you before you walk in the door (obscurity is thy enemy), so that you've got messaging that resonates with the buyers you're targeting. The internet has changed everything, your buyers know more about you and your competitors than ever before, and typically contact you a lot further through their buying cycle. If you're lucky they are reading your marketing messaging but they're most definitely reading social review websites, trawling LinkedIn, analyst reports. So of course, your market capability has to get in you in the game.All the capabilities are well known, SEO, Inbound, Outbound, A/B testing, Newsletters, Events, sales e-mail tracking, mass e-mail campaigns, chat agents, WorkFlows etc.. All these can be found in good Marketing Automation tools such as CallidusCloud, Eloqua, Marketo, Neo-lane.Territory & Quota ManagementAll these leads need to be assigned, therefore Territories need to be defined. To define acceptable Territories, sales will want to know they have sufficient opportunity and a quota that is achievable in that territory.  Where you have unallocated territories (by accounts, geography or product, etc..) or over-allocated territories - you are leaking revenue and losing market share to competitors.  You will need some kind of Territory & Quota management tool such as CallidusCloud or Anaplan.Sales EnablementOnce you have the leads and the first person contact, how do you ensure maximise lead to opportunity conversion?  For this, your sales or business development team need access to the right messaging for each specific buyer (by industry, by size, by problem etc..) immediately.  This is a field known as Sales Enablement and there are Enablement tools available to help your marketing messaging find the salesperson at the right time. Well known Enablement tools are CallidusCloud, Savo, Sharepoint.Configure, Price & Quote (CPQ)Now you have an opportunity, your buyer might ask you for a price. Sales needs to put together a solution, price the solution and then send out a proposal document.  How familiar are the stories of salespeople copying/pasting proposals - not removing old customer names, getting the number of zero's wrong, selling solutions that don't exist or fit together, over-discounting - and taking a week to put together such a low quality document only to lose the opportunity.  To avoid this waste of time and opportunity, you will need a Configure, Price, Quote or CPQ tool.  Well known CPQ tools are CallidusCloud, Big Machines.Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM)Since you did a great proposal in CPQ, the customer is asking you for a contract and you may go through a substantial red-line process or you may have lots of data points in the contract that are needed to manage the contract for renewal processes, order fulfilment, upgrades, service utilisation.  To avoid creating and tracking contracts manually everytime, which can be an administrative nightmare for legal, finance and sales. You will need a Contract Lifecycle Management tool.  Well known Contract Management tools are CallidusCloud, Apttus.Incentive Compensation Management (ICM)The customer has signed the contract and happy days!!!  Your salesperson, pre-sales engineer, sales manager, product over-lay are all expecting to be paid incentives.  Gartner research found that up to 8% of sales compensation is in error.  Not only is this a bottom line expense, sales lose trust in their compensation payouts, they waste time shadow accounting, they leave earlier, you need more FTEs to process all the claims and you get less $$$ for every $ of sales comp.  You will need a Incentive Compensation tool, to control this process, increase transparency and drive behaviours that drive sales performance.  Well known ICM tools are CallidusCloud, IBM.Sales CoachingThere is a lot to a sales process. A lot of objections to ovecome. A lot to learn.  Even the best in their field have a coach.  Tiger Wood's at the peak of his golfing powers had 400 lessons in a year.  Tiger really needs a coach now but I bet you even Rory McIlroy needs a coach.  Salespeople need a coach too. The folks who wrote the challenger sales, said that "effective coaching" for 3 hours or more a month delivers a 17% uptick in quota achievement. That's great.  Trouble is, who's coaching the coaches so they're effective? You will need a Sales Performance Manager tool to help managers coach and help the managers to coach more effectively.  Well known Coaching tools are CallidusCloud SPM, iCoach.Mobile LearningTaking a salesperson out of the field for the proverbial week's training - you lose a week's selling, sales take time to get back into the rhythm when they return and then forget most of their training within 3 weeks anyway. Provide point of need training with mobile learning so that sales can refresh knowledge before they call a lead, before they walk into a meeting, as they prepare a quote in the field.  Well known Mobile LMS tools are CallidusCloud Litmos or Cornerstone.Customer ExperienceThe time from first touch on your website to first contract and then first renewal is a long time.  What is perhaps most important of all is to obtain customer feedback continuously along the way. Customer feedback helps you refine how you go to market or go to customer as they say these days.  For that you will need a Customer Survey tool.  Well known survey tools are CallidusCloud Clicktools and Survey Monkey.Thats a lot of tools and all of them are complementary to CRM. CRM is customer relationship management and is used to track activity and pipeline for management purposes - helps salespeople focus their time - but it doesn't help them sell better.  All of the above tools integrated to your CRM provide you a more complete view of the customer and sales activity.The questions for each sales and marketing organisation are:- Can your budget afford all these tools?- How many different RFPs do you want to commit to?- How many tools from different vendors do you want to integrate? - How many suppliers do you want to contract and manage with?

“Yeah, this little shit needs to stop making us clean up after him…”I was working an awesome job that I really liked. I was a cashier at a local health food grocery store. Since I was vegetarian, I loved chatting with most of the customers who visited; most of them were hippies, health nuts, or they just had a good amount of money and wanted the best food.When I have a job, I’m extremely committed to it. It was more important to me than school, so I told them I would come in on Monday mornings every week during the school year just because that’s when they needed me. I was working there for...