B2B contact and lead generation provider DiscoverOrg on Monday said it would acquire its competitor ZoomInfo and create a combined platform serving marketing and sales professionals over the next year. Financial terms of the deal between DiscoverOrg, which is based in Vancouver, Wash. and Waltham, Mass.-based ZoomInfo were not disclosed. The two firms said ZoomInfo […]
I’ve rarely been a B2B buyer, and I’ve never been a B2B salesperson, but I have spent most of my life being witness to those trying — and usually failing — to make a B2B sale. As an editor, it has often been part of my role to tag along with salespeople at the various […]
We live in a personalized world. Netflix, Amazon, Spotify, and almost every service we access online now curates content according to our tastes. That means when we sit down to view, purchase, or stream, we no longer need to waste time scrolling through content we would never in a million years care about. Instead, because […]
The majority of B2B firms pursuing some kind of digital transformation projects are trying to improve customer experiences — particularly the ability for buyers to make purchases, according to research from configure-price-quote (CPQ) software maker FPX. Based on a survey of approximately 230 B2B firms with a strong focus on the manufacturing sector, the study […]
The new year will bring with it many changes, but here’s one thing that wil stay the same: B2B buyers will only come to to a particular vendor because they need the product that only that company can offer. Mitchell Harper, the Co-founder of BigCommerce, has listed 8 rules for building a great product. These […]
As B2B sales reps go through their annual performance reviews with managers, a startup called CommercialTribe has created a software-as-a-service tool that will grade them across 24 behaviors based on an analysis of more than 40,000 recorded sales interactions. Based in Denver, CommercialTribe formally launched CT Coach earlier this week, boasting HubSpot as an early […]
This week’s SiriusDecisions acquisition for $245 million by fellow research and adivsory firm Forrester will mean many more line-of-business executives learn about “the Sirius Way,” according to its CMO. Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester announced its SiriusDecisions acquisition on Tuesday, citing opportunities to expand further into vertical markets such as finance and utilities, as well as geographies […]
Showpad on Wednesday will announce an acquisition that will bring artificial intelligence-based voice recording and transcription analysis to its customer base of sales professionals as a way of boosting their productivity and effectiveness. The Chicago-based firm, whose software offers a range of sales enablement capabilities to B2B firms, said it has purchased Voicefox, a two-year […]
Customer relationship management provider Affinity is using artificial intelligence technology to sift through employees’ e-mail and calendar data in hopes of easing the search for “warm” introductions to prospects and customers. San Francisco-based Affinity described Alliances, which was released on Monday, as a tool that will create a “relationship graph” to help those in sales […]
B2B buyers spend the equivalent of a full-time work week researching products and services worth more than $100,000, but 86 per cent feel overwhelmed when they’re presented with more than 10 pieces of content, according to a research study from Showpad. The Belgium-headquartered firm on Tuesday released The New B2B Buyer Experience, which drew upon […]
The success of account-based marketing depends on collaboration and alignment between marketing and sales. Both teams must agree on goals, metrics and methods before they can implement an impactful account-based marketing strategy. Collaboration is imperative to success but difficult to accomplish considering the already labor-intensive and process-detailed workplans for each department. The good news is […]
LinkedIn says the addition of a Deals feature to its Sales Navigator tool will pull pipeline data directly from customer relationship management systems and make it easier to find additional contacts before a potential purchase decision goes awry. The Deals feature was one of several additions to Sales Navigator LinkedIn announced in a blog post […]
B2B firms may talk a lot about account-based marketing and developing a more one-to-one relationship with customers, but a recent survey from appointment-setting software firm TimeTrade suggests many of them are ignoring direct outreach from potential buyers. In ‘What Buyers Want: The State Of The B2B Buying Experience,’ TimeTrade surveyed approximately 300 business professionals during […]
Sales enablement software firm Showpad has released what it describes as an AR e-commerce tool that will let B2B buyers get a closer look and feel at what they’re purchasing and how it might work in their organization. Using Apple’s ARKit, the AR e-commerce tool allows sales people to develop models that are projected through […]
There’s no shortage of excellent B2B sales tips out there. Here are a few I believe in: Listen more than you talk. Empathize – put yourself in their shoes (this one is very near and dear to me — it’s what I named my business). Stop pushing. Start helping. Sell benefits …. not features – […]
More than half of B2B organizations said integration with legacy technologies is hampering their adoption of e-commerce tools and 37 per cent say they lack the ability to support various sales channels, according to a research study from Magento Commerce. While 85 per cent of organizations said they were interested in offering customers ways to […]
A startup called Crowdy.ai has created a widget it describes as a “social proof engine” that it hopes will change the way B2B companies sell online by providing visual evidence of prospects during into customers. Deal-Maker is a web site integration that provides real-time updates on how web site visitors are taking action on a […]
There’s a funny disconnect I experience every semester: One hundred percent of my Marketing students want to be employed when they graduate (duh). But when I ask them what type of job they hope to land, almost none of them say sales. Why is this a disconnect? Because the very large majority of them will […]
Every year, technology vendors allocate billions of dollars to help their channel partners promote their businesses and offerings. Every year, nearly half of these funds go unspent. At a time when channel effectiveness is tilting heavily, reaching a 95/5 ratio in some industries (as n 5% of partners are generating 95% of sales) […]
SAP on Tuesday used its annual Sapphire Now user conference to announce a customer experience software suite dubbed C/4HANA that will include a what it called a “fourth generation” customer relationship management tool, along with the acquisition of a field service software firm called Coresystems. C/4HANA will include SAP’s Sales, Marketing, Commerce and Service Clouds, […]
