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Trish Bertuzzi

Trish Bertuzzi

The Bridge Group, Inc.
I founded The Bridge Group with a mission to help technology companies build highly successful inside sales teams. Since 1998, we have worked with over 190 technology clients, helping them increase productivity, drive higher conversion from leads to revenue and maximize Inside Sales performance.
  • 3 Inside Sales Trends to Watch (Part 2)
    0 comments 279 reads
    Posted on 2013-03-06

    Last week, I shared the first part in our series on trendspotting thus far in 2013. This week, Janet, Trish (yours truly), and Patrice share our perspectives on: 

    ~60 days in, what's everyone seeing that is changing in 2013?

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    The 3, 5, 7-or-more Legged Buying Team

    Whether nostalgia or fact, selling used to be a lot simpler. Continuing the trend from 2012, buyers' decision making processes are more and more complicated.

    Today, there is nearly never a single decision maker. Not only do we have to convince the budget owner (we’ll save you money, time, hassle, etc.), but we must also...

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  • Green Shoots of a Sales Spring
    0 comments 445 reads
    Posted on 2013-02-22

    On one of our internal chatter groups, a member of The Bridge Group team posed this question:

    45 days in, what's everyone seeing that is changing & improving in 2013?

    I thought it would be interesting to share the responses from our team members (folks not often featured on this blog). Just a fun and hopefully thought provoking piece.

    Note: we broke the responses into two parts, this is the first in the series.
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    Voicemails are being… returned!

    We all know our buyers receive dozens of sales voicemails on a daily basis. But something old has become new again: buyers returning some of those voicemails.

    I’ve noticed that the voicemails that are inspiring action...

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  • Closing Year-End Business
    0 comments 496 reads
    Posted on 2012-12-11

    Last week, I joined a dozen or so sellers in a #SalesInsiders chat on “Closing more business by year-end.” I wanted to share some of the great ideas that came out of that conversation.

    More business - less discounting

    • Upsell the deals you were going to close anyway. If you have a great relationship and you know the deal is going to close, ask if there is any budget they need to spend by year-end. Before you ask, make sure you have a product/solution in mind for them to spend it on.
    • Use your Executives to call prospect Execs to get a deeper sense of the deal and what can be done to close it by year-end. That is what your executive management team is there for. They are a resource for you - use them. (h/t to ...
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  • How to Lose a Sale in 3 Emails
    0 comments 1,209 reads
    Posted on 2012-11-27

     
    If you’ve read this blog for any period of time, you know my thoughts on Sales Reps using email as the primary vehicle for communicating with buyers.

    Not only can too many things go wrong (as you'll see below), but in reality a sale doesn’t start until someone has a conversation.

    A colleague of mine, let’s call him Nick, sent me the following:

    Trish – since I’ve seen some of your posts on ‘how NOT to do a cold call’ and related sales silliness, I thought I would pass this along.  Here’s an example of a horrible sales experience with me as the buyer.

    I thought this story might make good fodder for a post stressing the importance of qualifying, when live conversations make sense, and how to screw up a deal with email.

    Here’s the email exchange

    ...

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  • Want Sales Productivity, Be Fanatical in Hiring a Front-Line Manager
    0 comments 501 reads
    Posted on 2012-09-26


    Ask anyone and they’ll tell you, this Inside Sales hiring market is on fire. Companies are cannibalizing each other’s Reps with top-tier candidates pretty much sitting on a Lazy Susan and waiting to be served up to the next highest bidder.

    Clients are constantly asking me, “How do we compete? What can we do to recruit A-players?”

    Here’s my response, “If you want the best Reps, make a strategic investment in your front-line sales managers.”

    The ever-wise Tom Peters shares:

    The evidence is clear: Employee satisfaction and like variables are significantly, even overwhelmingly, linked to the employee's relationship with her or his first-line manager. 

    If you are evaluating candidates, here are 8 Inside Sales Manager interview...

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  • Chief Revenue Officer: The Emerging Role
    0 comments 703 reads
    Posted on 2012-09-05

    Keith Nealon  
    I'm always excited to speak with senior B2B execs that really get both sides of the revenue coin (meaning sales & marketing). From time to time, I’ll interview such an Executive and bring you their perspective.

    Today, I am with Keith Nealon, Chief Revenue Officer of M5 Networks, a provider of cloud-based business phone systems.

    I’ve known Keith for a number of years as he has built, led and scaled winning B2B organizations.

    Trish:        Keith, you’ve mentioned that the...

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  • 6 Lead Generation Metrics You Should Know
    0 comments 1,041 reads
    Posted on 2012-08-28

    Lead Generation compensation
    We recently published our 2012 LeadGen Metrics & Compensation Report. Just under 200 technology companies participated and we compiled 20 pages of data, insight & ideas.

    For those of you who don’t have the time or energy to read the full report (and I hope you find both at some point), I thought I’d assemble a few snippets for you.

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  • Separating fact from fiction for managing Gen Y Sales Reps
    0 comments 699 reads
    Posted on 2012-06-05


    There’s no shortage of biases, prejudices and opinions around how ‘different’ Gen Y sales reps are. What is lacking is a clean examination of how Gen Y sellers differ from their Gen X & Boomer peers in terms of motivations, aspirations & future plans.

    With my partner in crime, Steve Richard, we decided to do a little something about that.

    We surveyed 983 sales reps on their current roles, motivations, needs & wants. We seperated out the Gen Y sellers and compared their responses to those from Gen X & Boomer. 

    And I have to say, the findings were eye-opening.

    We opted to take a Mythbusters approach...

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  • 8 Key Ingredients in Hire-to-Revenue Onboarding
    0 comments 635 reads
    Posted on 2012-05-08

     
    Hiring great Inside Sales reps has never been harder.

    Increased competition for top talent and supply lagging behind demand means that when we land that great rep we have to make their experience with us outstanding! It is as much about retention as recruitment, right?

    Our recent hiring infographic noted that 41% of reqs take 45+ days to fill. This is creating quite a revenue gap.

    I recently shared my thoughts about how you have to be interesting and different to draw talent to you. But let’s say you are successful, what then?

    • How do you close the revenue gap by onboarding these reps as quickly as...
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  • You're Hired to Lead a Startup, What's First?
    0 comments 893 reads
    Posted on 2012-03-27


    A few weeks back, I came across this scenario on LinkedIn (slightly anonymized to protect identities).

    The CEO of a growth-focused company has hired you to oversee Sales & Marketing.

    Her company is doing north of $10M in revenue and just took a Series A round of funding to “aggressively grow its sales and marketing activity.”

    She has been focused like a laser beam on product and delivery. Marketing efforts consist mostly of tradeshows and webinars, generating leads for their Field team of 6.

    There isn’t great consistency in terms of how Sales is talking about the product or who they are targeting. She is concerned that the lack of a cohesive prospecting strategy won’t allow them to scale to hit new revenue targets.

    What are...

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