The Bottom Line Vine

Sales vs. Marketing

Sales vs. Marketing
They drive growth, are always looking for results, and try to stay ahead of the competition.  Innovation, creativity, and resilience are just some of the attributes of these departments.  However, these departments are constantly butting heads.  They each have similar goals, share the credit of a good job, and share the blame in [...]

Friday Sales Quote

Taken from Joe Paterno:
“You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That’s the mark of a true professional.”

Trade Show Myths

Trade show Myths
Having worked and attended hundreds of trade shows, these events are akin to herding cats.  It is hard to keep exhibitors excited to talk to the next customer.  Attendees are looking for free knick knacks or tickets to the night’s event.  Most are likely hung-over, tired and aimlessly walking the aisles.
Unfortunately, for most [...]

Why do I need sales/marketing to promote my tool? The product is good, it should sell itself!

The ‘if you build it, they will come’ argument has long been prevalent in the technology space.  With few exceptions, this model has proven to be completely unsuccessful; however, most company’s emphasis lies in building a better technology, not building a better sales team/sales channel.
Did your solution build itself?  Without building market awareness, do you [...]

Train your team to succeed

How many sales reps cringe when their manager schedules an all day training session?
To be a successful sales professional, you need to practice your craft.  You would never run a marathon without the proper preparation.  Yet many people are labeled ‘sales’ and expected to produce with no strategy, support, defined process, or training.
Unfortunately, sales training [...]

Sales Preparation

The first criteria of a successful sales rep? ORGANIZATION.
On a daily basis we interact with sales reps that miss meetings, forget names, emails, phone numbers, and even struggle using simple sales tools like Salesforce and Webex.  It becomes easy for prospective customers to forget these reps and their products.  Sales reps are a companies front [...]

Is Social Media Beneficial?

The Benefits of Social Media
Last week, we wrote about the countless hours of productivity lost to Facebook.  What about the potential benefit of social media for your organization?
Social networking allows any company the opportunity to broadcast a consistent stream of free marketing and PR to potential customers.  According to Dell, more than $6.5 million in [...]

Survival of the fittest

There is an old anonymous proverb, probably African in its origins that speaks to everyone in sales.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion also wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or [...]