The Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales & Marketing

This book shows how today's B2B leaders are integrating new approaches and technologies with proven techniques to find, get, and keep customers. The traditional business-to-business, face-to-face selling approach has been in decline for a number of years. In its place has risen a new integrated sales coverage method that incorporates the best practices of direct/database marketing and field sales into a new B2B communication mix that will dramatically improve sales and marketing productivity. "The New Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing" ties together the best of the old and the new, introducing a new sales coverage model that meets the needs of today's fast-paced, Web-based environment while retaining the benefits that only a knowledgeable, hands-on salesperson can bring to the table.Straight-talking and well-documented, this rulebook for selling success in the marketplace will show you how your organization can attain: improved, results-based marketing through the creation of a robust prospect and customer database; precise targeting of the right market through advanced segmentation and microsegmentation techniques; and, increased results from demand generation efforts that will produce real sales opportunities, not just raw inquiries Higher sales and profits for distributors and business partners through improved feedback systems and channel efficiencies. As a marketer, each day that you cling to outmoded technologies and practices could be costing you competitive advantages that will be difficult, if not impossible, to regain. "The New Fundamentals of Business-to-Business Sales and Marketing" will show you how to create and deploy a new sales coverage model that will enhance your go-to-market selling strategy and tactics like never before.'Yes, it's more difficult to sell today using the traditional salesperson-based go-to-market models. That's the bad news. The good news is that a new integration between sales and marketing is emerging that is producing a new sales coverage model. The goal of this book is to fully detail this model..." - From Chapter 1. Business-to-business selling has undergone a tremendous metamorphosis in the past decade. The actual purchase decision often requires input from many more people - frequently in multiple locations - while time-pressed buyers increasingly turn to the Internet for instant product information. Meanwhile, as sales professionals watch their call-to-close ratios go through the roof, they are driven even harder to meet the frequently heard twin appeals...