By now all the first-quarter sales results are in. Booked revenue is locked and you missed your first-quarter sales goals. While I’m sure you and everyone else at your company are disappointed, rest assured you’re not alone. Last week, I did a session at the EOS® (Entrepreneurial Operating System) Conference in San Diego and took an informal poll of over 100 CEOs and operational leaders. Only 10% reported being able to consistently hit their sales goals. Now I’m more of a look forward than a look back kind of guy. I was taught that being successful in life is about how you recover. What you d ..read more

You published and shared some new content, and now you’re seeing great engagement and conversion rates exceeding your expectations. Congratulations! The work you put into your content strategy to develop valuable assets is paying off. This great performance means you’ve hit on a topic that’s relevant and important. It’s time to take that value and use it to reach an even broader audience ..read more

Think of those times at a party or conference when you went beyond small talk and struck up a conversation. Instead of the usual job/family/weather topics, you asked questions about their experiences and goals. They mirrored that information and shared ideas that resonate with you. And you stuck around to talk more ..read more

It’s not such an easy question when you’re evaluating technology for the sales and marketing part of your company. Do you go with one solution that crosses every aspect of your marketing and sales execution, or do you go with the best in breed for each area and integrate them all together? There’s no universal right or wrong answer, but there is a right answer for your company, and to make that decision you should have the facts at your fingertips. For the most part, it comes down to a tricky little word called integration. Most software providers say their products can be integrated with any ..read more

Everyone is caught up in March Madness this year, and I would like to work down my field of 64 best lead generation tactics for the annual event. The elite eight of lead generation is based on our experience, research and years of practical execution with clients. The criteria used to select these eight tactics include effectiveness based on client results, lift required to get the campaigns up and running, and the ability to analyze and optimize, since we want to improve these tactics over time ..read more

Google recently released the March 2024 core update aimed at providing better search results. Other changes include incorporating the helpful content system into its overall core ranking system and enforcing spam policies through automated algorithms and manual actions. This is going to affect everyone, and you should be planning for the changes proactively and monitoring your site performance. Read on to learn how to get ready and better understand how Google works ..read more

All marketing is changing at light speed. Technology, AI, data regulations and even prospect buyer behavior have all had dramatic influences on what inbound marketing is and how inbound marketing is used across the ecosystem. Inbound marketing agencies – if that’s even a thing today – are all quickly evolving their inbound marketing practices to take advantage of these changes. While I’m a huge proponent of inbound marketing as a methodology, the changes are massive and worth unpacking so that your inbound marketing execution is up to date ..read more

After repeatedly listening to CEOs and marketing professionals across various industries express their frustrations about the underperformance of their marketing efforts, it’s evident that something is hindering even the most basic marketing executions. In the simplest of terms, most marketing professionals and business leaders are trying to do marketing without a map or a GPS, and it’s not surprising that they’re not getting to their intended destination. Instead, consider a more strategic approach, one that starts with a map of your prospects’ buyer journeys ..read more

Last week, we published a blog article with five of the top 10 sales metrics you must be tracking in 2024. This week, we’ll continue the conversation with the remaining five metrics that make hitting your sales targets much easier. If you missed the first part of this article, here’s a link to part 1. As a refresher, the first five metrics included sales cycle in days, the conversion rate of sales-qualified leads (SQLs) to sales opportunities, the conversion rate for sales opportunities to proposals submitted, the close rate on proposals/agreements submitted and average revenue per new custom ..read more

One month down in 2024 and 11 more to go. How is your sales effort going? Did you hit your number in January? How’s February looking? If you’re like most of the CEOs I’ve talked with over the past few months, you’re up one month and down the next. It’s hard to get any solid and consistent momentum. If this sounds like you, you’re missing something. You don’t have the right marketing. You don’t have the right sales team. You’re not training the sales team you do have. You don’t have the right technology. You need a revenue generation system if you want scalable, repeatable and predictable reve ..read more