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.
  • 0 comments 166 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...
  • 0 comments 316 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...

  • 0 comments 314 reads
    Posted on 2012-02-09


    Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the AA-ISP Senior Exec Retreat and spending time with 50+ Execs, VPs and Directors sharing & discussing issues relevant to inside sales.

    One of the workshops focused on Employee Lifecycle. Well, let me tell you that I learned a ton from the other attendees – Inside Sales leaders from companies like IBM, Mentor Graphics, Staples, & Henkle to name a few.

    I thought I’d share a few takeaways from that session – specifically focused on the front end of the employee lifecycle: Sourcing.

    For the better part of the last 15 years we’ve all used a combination of the following to source candidates:

    ...
  • 0 comments 619 reads
    Posted on 2012-01-12

    It’s 2012 and high time to revisit 9 predictions that Laurie Page and I made early in 2011. I thought it might be interesting to see how well we did.

    We’ll be scoring our predictions like a 9-hole round using this point system:

    • Hole-in-one (1) - when a prediction hits the nail on the head  
    • Birdie (3) - predictions that are in the area, but aren’t quite holes-in-one
    • Bogey (5) - those that landed near the truth, but missed par
    • Snowman (8) - those that just didn't come close
    1. ...
  • 0 comments 513 reads
    Posted on 2011-11-10

    I recently participated in a conversation over at Focus.com: How can you create a culture where your employees feel comfortable creating content? The idea being, that the creation of content is now an organizational responsibility as opposed to just being Marketing’s.

    At one point in the dialogue, I was sick of hearing what all the pundits think (myself included) so I threw down the glove and asked a Sales Exec to chime in. Well, Alex Shootman the Chief Revenue Officer of Eloqua did. His excellent response follows:

    ...
  • 0 comments 728 reads
    Posted on 2011-11-02

    18 short months ago I was presenting to a room full of 200 or so Inside Sales Executives at the AA-ISP Leadership Summit.  I asked them the following:

    • Raise your hand if you believe that sales onboarding is a critical factor in the success of new hires: almost all the room
    • Raise your hand if you have a documented process: about 2/3 of the room
    • ...
  • 0 comments 644 reads
    Posted on 2011-08-24

     
    I have a confession to share – I have gone through the full 5-stage Kübler-Ross coping model with the buzz around Social Selling.

    Here’s how it went:

    • Stage 1: Denial

      Oh brother, another prospecting upgrade that trashes everything that came before it. This can’t be happening again.
    • Stage 2: Anger

      Are you kidding me?!! “Social” doesn’t sell – people do.
    • Stage 3: Bargaining

      I actually like what Nigel Edelshain has to say about Social Calling, maybe we can take the best prospecting tips and leave the BS Bingo...
  • 0 comments 619 reads
    Posted on 2011-07-27

     
    This is the final part of a podcast with Brian Zimmerman on “pitfalls to avoid when building an inside sales team.” You can find the 1st part of conversation here: Common Pitfalls When Building Inside Sales.

    (Note: You can read a transcript of the conversation, you can listen to the podcast, or you can view a brief slideshare presentation of...

  • 0 comments 986 reads
    Posted on 2011-06-01

    I recently discovered a blog that I really enjoy - Pam Moore’s The Marketing Nut.

    With her permission I’ve excerpted parts of her Social Media: A Little Less Talk and a Little More Action Please. The full post is well worth the read, but I want to focus on her “Too Much Yappin’” Test. 

    To set the stage Pam asks:

    Seriously folks, are you drinking too much of the social conversation Kool-aid? Do you really think that all you have to do is be social and the Twitter bird is going to deliver a basket of ROI to save your butt and justify all that yappin’ you’re doin’?

    More action please!

    If yer “yapper” is yappin’ your audience should be clickin’! Inspire your audience to...

  • 0 comments 915 reads
    Posted on 2011-04-20


    Did you ever run across an organization that you want to model your business against because they just get it? Well, I have and for me that organization is OpenView Venture Partners.

    OpenView is focused on finding, capitalizing and assisting expansion stage technology companies on accelerating their journey toward market leading companies.

    .
    We find them to be open, sharing, knowledgeable and some of the best networkers around. Since we have a love fest going with them, we wondered if their portfolio companies feel the same way. So I asked if we could interview one.

    What follows is a conversation I had with Isaac Garcia, Co-Founder & CEO...