This week’s blog is from Ben Bradley, Managing Director of Macon Raine, Inc., who also blogs on marketing, sales technology and just about everything else at BenBradley.net.

Caught your attention with that headline, didn’t I.

 It’s not a misprint. The fact is that too many sales professionals are working harder than necessary because they are completely missing the obvious.
 
You’re going to slap your forehead in disbelief when I tell you this: It is hard to sell to someone unless you know who they are.

CRM data is crying for attention. And most of the sales people I talk to are crying about the ugly state of their data. Most complain that they don’t have time to clean it.

Data, like unrefrigerated milk, goes bad fast. In fact, some pundits estimate that 25% of a database will sour within a year. Add poor import practices and other minor mistakes, and bad things in the CRM system quickly snowball. It isn’t until senior management realizes they are making strategic decisions on the back of sub-par data that heads begin to roll.

Head rolling is a complicated thing. Do you yell at the person responsible for cleaning the data in use, the person responsible for preventing low quality data from getting into the system, the sales people for not updating contact information, or the marketing department for not scrubbing the unworkable email addresses? Or should the executive team look in the mirror because clean data was not a strategic priority?

Some organizations try to fix the problem by assigning an intern to scrub data instead of committing to a permanent process change.

Others will look longingly for new gadgets, tools, hosted software, widgets, mobile apps or various marketing automation tools to fix the problem. These things can provide a wonderful shiny distraction and may also be an incredible technology advantage…but they are no substitute for permanent process change.

Need to rationalize major process changes  to upper management? The ROI for clean data is simple. All things being equal, a company with a larger database of clean prospects will close more business than a company with a smaller database of clean prospects.

Barry Trailer, of CSO Insights, confirmed what we all know.  “The 2,800 companies participating in CSO Insights’ 2010 Sales Performance Optimization survey (being released 2/1/10) confirmed what everyone knew: 2009 was the toughest year yet.  But it was harder on some firms than others.  Those implementing higher levels of sales process implementation, enjoying higher levels of relationship with their customers, and leveraging enabling technologies fared better than the rest. Of course, having accurate data to inform your systems and processes is key.”

Data quality is not a one-time event. Cleaning your data will cost money and so will the process improvements needed to support ongoing data quality. But in the end it is worth it.

So while the option of continuing to work harder, not smarter holds its own appeal, a fast way to improve sales and marketing success is to fix things that can be fixed.  Data quality is one of those things that can be fixed fast.

Most of the organizations Dave Brock works with are very high performance organizations.  They have great products, great sales people, and provide solutions that can have great impact on their customers.  However, in meeting with them, he often hears, “Our customers just don’t get it, they don’t see the impact we produce!  How do we get them to better understand?”

There’s more to successful selling than knowing your product, longtime sales professional-turned-trainer Diane Marie Pinkard of Bonny Doon says.The secret of the best salespeople is to treat people well, said the author of the newly published “Just Treat Me Like I Matter: The Heart of Sales.”

In this article, she’s sharing her own pitch to help other salespeople connect better with their would-be clients.

Kimberly Collins asks the question: Has there been a “Death of the Sales Professional” as we have known it? Collins sought out answers to this question and asked a handful of influential sales leaders what they felt were some of the most important characteristics of a successful sales professional in the Sales 2.0 Generation.

Do you want to know why some sales people are struggling?  Because they are believing all the whiners, sales snipers, and so called gurus who like to “talk” sales instead of “make” sales.  These “big talkers” are filling everybody’s head with junk! 

Doyle Slayton has had enough of hearing people talk about how “prospects like to buy, they don’t want to be sold”.  He’s tired of hearing that sales is “all about building relationships”.  He’s sick of hearing that “cold calling is dead,” intrusive, and whatever else! The reason people say these things is simple… in a lazy kind of way.  Why do they say it?  Because it’s work.  Hard work.  That’s it.  They don’t want to work.  They want it to come easy, but sales isn’t that kind of job.  Selling is a job for mentally tough, strong-willed, highly motivated “workers.”

This week’s blog is by Paul Terlemezian, owner and founder of iFive Alliances, LLC, which focuses on building revenue-producing strategic alliances for training, consulting and technology companies.

The concept of “Strategic Alliances,” or partnerships, is often used interchangeably and loosely. There are at least 16 different types of alliances. For this blog, I will focus on alliances that are intended to produce revenue for each company as a result of the intentional collaboration to deliver a product or service to a third party.  The third party pays for the service and the alliance partners share revenue.

Strategic alliances take a long time to build – usually six to 12 months or much longer. Then the alliance has its sales cycle with the third party, although there is no guarantee of success. Each partner is risking time, money and brand. But when effective, a strategic alliance promises to save time and money while building or strengthening brand.

Here are some useful ideas for reducing risk and building more effective strategic alliances:

1. Focus on one-way streets. Alliances need to have a mutual benefit, but do not require both partners to do business development. The mutual benefit should be a strategic benefit to the third party and the reason for the alliance should be evident to the buyer. A two-way street may lead to confusion regarding selling effort or account management. I recommend separate agreements and rules of third party engagement for each direction of the alliance.
2. Establish an early focus on revenue goals and accountability. The primary reason for an alliance is profit for both partners. This will be achieved by gaining revenue from third parties. The partners need to agree on how much revenue, the time frame and the process for creating the revenue. The partners will also have to agree on being accountable to each other regarding operational tactics and financial matters.
3. Deal with the difficult issues up front (e.g. account ownership when the alliance ends). Discussing difficult matters will either “kill the alliance” or strengthen it. If it dies early it was probably going to die later and at least you save time, money and energy. On the other hand, knowing how you will handle difficult matters in advance will allow you to move forward more effectively.

Alliances are a combination of art and science. There is a professional association for alliance practitioners, Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals, and LinkedIn groups such as “Alliance Best Practice” and “Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals.” These resources can help you grow and maintain your knowledge while introducing you to other alliance professionals.

Poor sales performance is often mistaken for a motivational issue.  A fine line exists between the two and unless you are an astute manager, you are going to miss the mark. Ed Warner discusses the need to understand 5 myths of motivation, and three perspectives (theories) on motivation directly related to employee performance.

Dave Stein’s first interview for 2010 is with Steve Waterhouse, president of Predictive Results, a sales performance improvement provider based in Jacksonville, Florida.  In this interview with Steve, Dave focused on his business—what has made him successful.

Every year here at VerticalResponse I make it a point to come up with a list of 10 things you need to be  thinking about in the new year. They may be related to marketing, or running your business overall, and they’re usually something I relate to things I have to do in my own business:

1. Use “Cause Marketing” – This is the year that you should identify your business with a worthy cause and either donate a percentage of profits to it or contribute to it in some way. And if profits or hard cash don’t fit, consider donating employee time. Then in your email marketing campaigns, your marketing materials and sales pitches you should talk about what you’re doing and why it’s important to you. Your prospects and customers increasingly want to do business with a business that cares and has moral obligations, and they’re looking for you to let them know how you fit the bill.
2. Use Social Media with Email Marketing – Finally get your act together with social media this year. Start with Twitter and Facebook, it’s easy. Then set your goals on how many Twitter followers your business will get or how many Facebook fans you’ll attract. Make sure you tell your email marketing recipients to follow you when you send out a campaign. And don’t forget to post your links to your email campaigns in your Twitter account and Facebook pages and ask people to join your email list. All of these marketing vehicles work really well together and feed off of each other.
3. Nail Your Email Marketing – Your customers are your lifeblood in these economic times so make sure you put as much care as possible into how you communicate to them. One small yet important thing we all tend to overlook is the subject line, which is the most important part of your email. Whether you think about your subject line as the first order of business, or you write your email then come up with the subject line, take a moment and make sure it’s the right one. Here’s an idea the day before you send your campaign, take a small number of email recipients and split the list in two. Then send two different subject lines. If there is a clear winner, meaning one that has more clicks and opens, choose that one to roll out to your entire list the next day. If there isn’t a clear winner, then choose what your gut tells you to choose. Test a different format or a different day to send your email campaign. Squeezing an extra few opens, clicks and sales can make a huge difference for your business all throughout the year.Send regular surveys to your customers to find out how they rate your product, your company and customer service. Find out what you can be doing better, then tell your customers how you’re changing your ways in your next email newsletter because you’ve heard their message.
4. Make This the Year of Customer Service – People talk about companies that listen to them and that treat them well so you’ll want to go above and beyond with customer service this year. This is especially true since companies like Facebook and Twitter are taking off and becoming a platform for people to tell the world how they feel…about you. This might be the year you get your customer data all in one place so it’s easy to find a customer when they call. Then log all of their issues so you have it for next time. Try BigContacts, Zoho, ACT!, and Salesforce for low-priced options. Provide Support has an option for one operator for less than $10/month for a year. Also manage your incoming and outgoing customer service emails. Palo Alto Software has a great product called Email Center Pro where you can manage your incoming and outgoing emails from one central web location and it’s free for 2 users. 
5. Cut Costs – Keep cutting costs because we’re still in the economic weeds. Look at your top spending categories and see if there’s money to be saved. Is your rent too high? If you’ve got a number of years left on it you might call your landlord and ask if you can renegotiate “stepped” payments. Ask for a discount this year and tell them in the future years you’re willing to pay at bit more per square foot. If you’re spending too much on shipping, start calling other providers to see if they’re competitive. Doing things like this in January will add up for the rest of the year and help you to profitability.
6. Listen to Your Customers – Listen and watch what your customers are saying about you. Sign up for Google Alerts with your company name as a keyword, but also with your competitor’s names so you can see what is being published about them as well. Sign up for a free TweetDeck account and do the same. You’ll see what people on Twitter are saying about your company, your competition and even your industry, up-to-the minute for an unlimited number of keywords. Then chime in to the conversation and address the issue or try to get a new customer. Word to the wise: make sure you’re transparent with who you are, you don’t want to “hide” as someone else, tell them you’re with your company and you want to help out or answer any questions. 
7. Find New Customers, Inexpensively – Google is where people go these days to find businesses they’re looking for. So set up or build on your Google Adwords pay-per-click efforts. If you don’t know where to start with Google try Google Basics. Get started simple, choose keywords that make sense for your business and build on it from there. To find how many searches are happening on your keywords check out the Keyword Selector Tool to find out how many searches occur for your keywords. Note: although Google is the clear market leader, other search engines like Bing are gaining a bit of market share and can be less expensive. Word to the wise: take a deep breath and be patient, success doesn’t happen overnight but when you start to gain traction you’ll see that it does work and you can build on your success from there.
8. Build Your Email List – I’ve put together this blog post called 29 Ways to Collect Email Addresses for Your Business. Live it, learn it, love it.
9. Hire People Who Care – If you’re lucky enough to be hiring for your business, this should be the year where you have an ample choice of people who need to work to choose from, so it’s your pick. Make sure you select people who have the same passion as you do, and people that fit into your business culture like a glove. Make sure you ask the questions that count; you want someone who can handle situations, someone who can communicate and someone who you trust. Don’t settle for second best, your customers will notice.
10. Embrace Word of Mouth – At VerticalResponse over 50% of the people who sign up for our service select “Word of Mouth” as the source for where they heard about our company. In 2010 you’ll really need to take a good look at what you’re doing to spur word of mouth. As noted here, customer service is important, the quality of your product or service is important and the entire customer experience is important in order for word of mouth to start. But there are other remarkable things you can do for your customers that can start them talking about you.There are some great ideas on the VerticalResponse Blog as well as Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing Blog to get you started.2010 is poised to be a great year for growing your small business. Comment with your ideas for what you’ll do to get your growth on. 

Business executives are optimistic that 2010 will bring an increase in both revenues and hiring. That’s according to the annual Economic Survey by Naviga Business Services, which found that more than half of participating executives were optimistic about the New Year.

The survey, which was conducted via email, represents responses from CEOs and/or sales and marketing executives from a cross-section of industries.  It revealed a brighter outlook that is a breath of fresh air after 2009 – an economically tumultuous year that forced many businesses to make difficult decisions just to survive.

More than 53% of survey respondents said their companies were forced to slash non-payroll expenses to improve profits, making it the most common remedy to the economic downturn. Others included cutting payroll expenses to improve profits (48.8%) and increasing marketing (27.9%) or sales (14%) budgets to stimulate growth. Just fewer than 5% said they had made targeted acquisitions to stimulate growth.

During the coming year, many expect to resume hiring, with the bulk of activity taking place in the second quarter (53.1%). The majority of respondents (41.9%) said they expect to only hire new employees in select functions or geographic areas while 18.6% expect to hire replacements for department employees. More than 9% said they were planning to hire across the entire business, while 7% intend to fill positions that were placed on hold in 2009.

In terms of where hiring would take place, the Midwest was identified as the region with the most new hires planned (28.1%), followed by national hires (25%). Rounding out geographic plans were the Southeast (21.9%), Northeast (18.8%), Southwest (12.5%) and West (6.3%).

Hiring plans may be a direct result of the expected revenue increases predicted by many respondents. Nearly 35% predicted a revenue increase of up to 20%, while 23.3% expect revenues to climb by more than 20%. Nearly 21% expected revenue s to stay the same, while 14% expected them to decline by up to 10%. Another 7% of respondents predicted revenues would drop by more than 20%.

Those latter results may explain why 16% indicated that they are currently in a hiring freeze and 7% are planning layoffs. When asked when they expect the hiring freeze to end, respondents were split between the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2010 and 2011 or later (28% respectively).

 “It’s tough for us to see hiring anywhere other than sales,” said one respondent. “We would really be looking at leadership roles.”

More than 74% agreed, saying that hiring would focus on sales positions. Other positions targeted for hiring included customer service (32.3%), IT (19.4%), operations (19.4%), leadership (19.4%) and marketing (16.1%). The majority (87.9%) indicated that new hires would be placed in leadership positions rather than individual contributor positions (18.2%).

My personal belief is that we aren’t completely out of the economic rut. However, there are signs that a turn-around may be on the horizon. For example, the 4th quarter was Naviga Business Services’ best in 2009, and we continue to see positive indicators in our current workload.

And though I’m not yet comfortable with saying that trends are pointing toward a complete recovery, the increased optimism is certain to help boost employee morale. That carries its own positive impact on business.

What are your thoughts on 2010? I would love to hear what you believe the New Year will bring to your company.