Tom Meriam

There’s an ongoing debate about the ROI of social media marketing.  Many of the conversations center around measuring social media as a branding and awareness tool, while others concentrate on the value of thought leadership.

Monitoring the metrics for thought leadership and branding are important, but many marketers make the mistake of using those metrics to support the success of their social media initiatives.  This can result in C-level executives doubting the return on their investment in social media.

Simply put, your CEO is probably less interested in hearing about how many people are talking about your brand/product/service and more interested in learning how social media helped drive revenue.

As a sales person in the B2B Demand Generation space, I’ve invested countless hours researching,...

I recently came across the infographic (below), “Don’t Suck At Meetings” and had to share it along with 7 Tips For Successful Sales Meetings:

1.  Make Sr. Management participation optional unless they need to be there

While you might ultimately need buy-in from the CEO, COO or SVP to get the deal done, if their participation isn’t required to meet a specific meeting goal, make it optional for them to join.  Ask account contacts to describe who makes various decisions in the buying cycle so you know when more expensive employees need to be in the meeting.  Also, remember your value to your company as well.  Make sure the meetings you participate in have clear goals and the right decision-makers to authorize next steps so you’re not wasting company dollars.

2.  Keep it concise

You’ll likely get more meetings and accomplish more if you keep meetings to 15-30 minutes.  Doing so, along with clearly...

Years ago, Sales 2.0 was synonymous with Web 2.0 technologies.  For today’s marketing and sales professionals, Sales 2.0 is more than technology.  It’s a fundamental shift in mind-set that is contrary to how many of us were ‘taught” to do our jobs.  While technology brought it to life,  Sales 2.0 embodies the strategic and tactical approaches, best practices and re-thinking of how sales and marketing can more effectively meet the needs of today’s buyers.

For some, the adoption of the Sales 2.0 mentality occurred long ago.  For others, it has yet to happen. Where are you in the process?

Check out the “before” and “after” scenarios below and let me know your thoughts. Also, feel free to include your own scenarios in the comments.

Before Sales 2.0

You’d find out that your contact is no longer with the company in your monthly “stay-in-touch” call.  (Worse still, you find out from your contact’s replacement who is at the same extension...

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to experience InsideView’s first user summit, Insider Summit 2012. The panelists in break-out sessions presented great ideas and use cases for success in a variety of social selling areas – I highly recommend attending their next summit.

One session of particular interest to me was, “Social Selling Best Practices With InsideView.” Insideview’s Koka Sexton moderated the panel which included Don Otvos of Yammer and Dave Vacanti of Cornerstone OnDemand.

Both Don and Dave provided great use cases in which social selling (and InsideView) enabled their teams to close larger deals, faster. Post session, I asked both panelists about their experiences using registration gated and non-gated offer content in marketing and sales efforts. Each described very different approaches to...