The majority of B2B buying committees are now made up of Millennials, and 49 per cent of buyers never actually talk to a vendor’s sales rep, according to a research report from TrustRadius released this week. In its 2020 version of its B2B Buyer Disconnect study, which is based on a survey of more than […]
Category: Sales
ZoomInfo CRO: How we hit more than 600 demos in one day
You might expect a company that specializes in business contact details to be pretty good at reaching prospective customers, but ZoomInfo’s chief revenue officer says it has managed to reach a new personal best as a company by booking more than 600 demos of its software in a single day. The company, which is headquartered […]
InsideSales rebrands as Xant to demonstrate focus on transformative AI
InsideSales.com on Monday announced it was changing its name to Xant as part of a marketing campaign that will include a webinar this Thursday to discuss what it calls ‘the new face of sales engagement.” Based in Utah, InsideSales is best known for offering cloud-based tools that assist with sales, marketing and account management. The […]
LeadMD develops Sales and Marketing Alignment Index based on first-party research
Performance marketing consultancy LeadMD is using data it collected as part of a survey conducted in partnership with Drift to create what it calls a Sales and Marketing Alignment Index that will benchmark how well B2B teams are working together and offer ideas for improvement. The report, which was released on Monday, is based on […]
An experienced B2B leader eyes 20/20 predictions for 2020 sales
For 2020, most companies have their eye on sales. After all, this is the time that businesses and salespeople alike evaluate the past year and look ahead to the next, anticipating industry changes, determining where they can improve, and understanding how they need to evolve to continue meeting the needs of customers. While none of […]
Nintex research shows Gen Z have influenced purchases in 80% of businesses
Seventy-two per cent of managers believe their Gen Z employees are more tech-savvy than they are, which may explain why the vast majority of them are weighing on the kind of buying decisions that preoccupy those in B2B sales and marketing, a recent study from Nintex suggests. In its report, The Gen Z Effect On […]
Seismic study shows only 29 per cent of B2B firms can measure influence of content assets on sales
Brands often cite the importance of content in driving sales, but less than 30 per cent of B2B firms are tracking which marketing assets influenced the close of deal, according to a survey commissioned by Seismic. According to the firm’s State of Sales Enablement 2019, which was conducted for Seismic by Forrester Consulting and based […]
B2B sales research confirms buyers are overwhelmed and front-line managers are unprepared
Eighty per cent of B2B sales reps who help filter information and ease the decision-making process for customers close high-quality, low-regret deals, according to a report from research firm Gartner. Based on a survey of more than 1,000 B2B buyers, the Stamford, Conn.-based company’s report suggested that quantity and even accuracy of information is not […]
Pipedrive aims at enteprise sales teams with updated plans, AI-based assistant and learning portal
Pipedrive on Wednesday is launching an updated CRM suite that includes a virtual assist based on artificial intelligence, along with an online education platform and an enterprise plan in a bid to show it can serve larger organizations. Based in New York, Pipedrive’s latest release adds a slew of other features such as the ability […]
Accelerate the B2B sales cycle with better data: Here’s how
As a B2B sales or marketing professional, you’ve got a simple, straightforward goal: to help the business grow. If you take a look outside in early summer, you’ll see buds opening, new leaves unfurling, and shoots stretching towards the sun. And, it’s tempting to think that all growth comes with ease. To grow a business, […]
Outreach data scientists put emojis in B2B e-mail subject lines to the test, and . . .
Adding little clocks or other emojis before and after B2B e-mail subject lines like “Quick call next week” have a negative impact on reply rates, according to tests conducted by sales enablement firm Outreach. Using seven different variations featuring emojis that were subject to an A/B split, Outreach found an overall 42 per cent decline […]
Marketing comes third in departmental tech budget spending, DiscoverOrg survey shows
The number and diversity of “salestech” products and services may be dwarfed by those on the martech side, but a research study from DiscoverOrg shows that’s where the bulk of budgets allocated to tech will be going this year. In its inaugural Purchasing Power Survey, Vancouver, Wash.-based DiscoverOrg commissioned Wakefield Research to ask approximately 500 […]
The state of B2B e-commerce in 2019 (so far)
B2B e-commerce is changing at a rapid pace. A report from Forrester suggests that the US B2B e-commerce industry will hit $1.8 trillion by 2023. Besides, there would be a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10% for B2B eCommerce over the next five years. Another report from Frost and Sullivan presents a different scenario. […]
Showpad CPO promises to bring better coaching and a unified experience to sales managers
Showpad CPO Louis Jonckheere says the launch of the firm’s unified Sales Enablement Platform will help one of the least-supported in the enterprise to offer “coaching at scale” with training tools, easier administration and more. The Chicago-based firm’s release comes only nine months after it spent $50 million to acquire LearnCore, a provider of coaching […]
How the CRO role is changing the way B2B marketing and sales gets done
Something was off, and Mark Ramsay has had enough experience in the CRO role to not only recognize it, but to act on it. The CRO for Toronto-based appointment scheduling SaaS firm Coconut Software was going over the reporting with his team for the last 30 days of outbound calls. This involved looking into areas […]
Miller Heiman Group stats show B2B sales execs lean on renewals vs. improving team performance
B2B sales people are closing less than half of the deals they forecast and firms are relying on renewals from existing accounts to make up average of 70 per cent of revenues, according to a survey from Miller Heiman Group. The Chicago-based training firm’s CSO Insights team recently released its annual report, Selling in a […]
Conversica survey suggests AI could spark love between B2B sales and marketing teams
Ninety-three per cent of sales professionals and 87 per cent of marketers believe virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence technologies could improve cross-functional relationships, according to the results of a survey released by Conversica. The Valentine’s Day Sales and Marketing Report is based on responses from approximately 1,000 U.S.-based sales and marketing professionals and explored […]
What the democratization of learning means for Chief Revenue Officers and their teams
Chief revenue officers may have all the career experience they need to hire a sales manager, but judging the skills of a software developer may be a bit of a stretch. Of course, most CROs probably don’t oversee teams of programmers today, but the increasingly data-driven nature of sales means they could be pulled into […]
90% of B2B sellers tell InsideSales they expect AI to improve their performance in 2019
While the overwhelming majority of B2B sales professionals have high hopes for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help them do their jobs, less than half have actually started to implement such tools, according to the results of a recent survey released by InsideSales. Based on a set of questions fielded to more […]
DiscoverOrg president discusses ZoomInfo acquisition and the quest to corner the B2B contacts market
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 […]