Sales, Social and Tech

There was a time whenever I heard the title sales and marketing, I would cringe a little. However, doing channel sales now, a little dash of marketing can do wonders to your sales funnel. If the end is closing the deal, then the starting point of the sales journey is get a lead. In a traditional setting, that lead generation portion is often left to the marketing team. In today's Internet social media world, the salesperson with that dash of marketing will outsell those who draw the line between sales and marketing. The American Marketing Association most recently defined marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Isn't the salesperson the best to do tall these? Today the medium and distribution channel are almost free. You could easily start a blog in seconds, with Blogger, Wordpress or event start a new po...

I been listening to several sales podcasts recently and one of the common tips that they give is that you should make the phone call daily to touch base with your sales prospects. I have the additional task of building the company's partner base and calling partners on a regular basis is also part of parcel of getting them to help bring me more customers. Today, a phone call help closed a deal. Sounds easy yet behind the phone call was some hard work and creative thinking to get the deal. This deal was considered as one that is handed to me on a plate as it was a maintenance deal to be renewed. For maintenance deals, the customer have already been using the company's solution for at least a year so there isn't the challenge of having to do the whole introduction spill again. Getting the appointment to close the deal was, on the other hand, the toughest part. This was because the customer was quite busy and had a tight schedule for a meeting. There were times w...