They have an interesting line-up of webcasts around selling CRM, ERP and the private cloud, as well as a number of other Microsoft products but the one that caught my attention was “innovative prospecting” from Andrea Sittig-Rolf. Andrea is the author of 4 compelling business books, a column writer for the Huffington Post, and the Sales Host for the HP/Microsoft’s “Coffee Coaching” channel on YouTube.

Check out her session coming up on March 14^th at 8:00am PT at http://www.mssalesspecialist.com/Calendar/ as well as the January topic on standing out from the pack (for you marketers reading this) as well as the February topic on “How to Sell the Cloud”.

What makes these sessions a bit different than the norm is that the recorded sessions have much more “content”. For example, with the “How to Sell the Cloud” recorded webcast, I can not only play the webcast but I can download the podcast, an enterprise slide show and a small business slide show. All good stuff to incorporate into the sales process without having to create it myself!

NOTE: You’ll have to use your Windows Live ID to sign into the site.

By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group.

On the other hand, you may be the hare, making business decisions on the fly without a lot of information to back it up, or perhaps it’s because you –and your business – are always moving and need to react quickly.

There’s no right or wrong, but this interesting blurb on Manta states that “Rapidly growing businesses have tied the speed of their decision making to their success. There are not a lot of examples that show success from slow or drawn out decisions.”

In a perfect world, we would have all the data and knowledge we need to QUICKLY make good decisions every day. Unfortunately, we don’t (but that would be a little boring, wouldn’t it?) Plus, the drawn out decision usually isn’t enormously better than the one made in half the time that your team could move forward on.

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WebstersOnLine.com (WOL) is an online business to business search engine. According to the website, WOL attracts over 30 million visits mostly by procurement or buying agents a year and growing.

Fortunately, it was easy to enter “concrete” in the Product/Service tab and select the state. Viola! I had what I was looking for, including address, phone number, and in some cases, a contact name and title. One thing I like is the ability to see the SIC codes (3272, 3312, 5032) associated with a particular concrete manufacturer and to hyperlink to other business that fall into those SIC code categories.

Give it a try! It’s a quick way to build a “specialty” list that is highly targeted to your marketing efforts.

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Here’s an excellent article from Manta that explains how to boost your email response rates with 4 easy tips.

1. Keep it short. Your reader doesn’t have the time, or won’t make the time, to wade through more than a paragraph. When seeing a long email, the immediate thought is “I’ll get to this later”. Unfortunately, by the time “later” rolls around, the email has been long buried in the inbox.
2. Break up large blocks of text. Use bullets. Make your message easy to scan and easy to understand what the action item is because the reader will not take the time to figure out what you’re trying to say.
3. Get your readers’ attention at the beginning. Put the most important content “above the fold”. Don’t make the reader scroll down to understand the message. And make the message compelling with an interesting short story (such as a customer’s story you can highlight), use enticing facts, or surprise them.
4. Have a single call-to-action. Direct the reader to one single action instead of confusing them with multiple options. “If you like this, go here. But if you’re more interested in that, go there…”

For more, check out the full article at http://www.manta.com/sales/boost_email_pt2.  And in the spirit of #4 on the list above, we invite you to opt into the e-newsletter at http://www.thepartnermarketinggroup.com/contact/ to receive marketing tips and ideas delivered to your inbox once a month!

I can’t say for certain how many tradeshows, conferences and events are listed but I know it is hundreds if not thousands. And the beauty is not only can you search by an event name, date, city, and state, but you can search by industry. For example, if I’m looking for technology events because I’m a national ISV with a product, I can quickly see the 1038 events in this category by name of the event, the location, the expected attendance, and the date.

If I sell ERP and CRM software in the healthcare space, I can see there are 2447 events listed. Too many to scroll through so I might want to whittle that by down state or date.

NOTE: You need to be a paid member of the site to drill down into details of the shows ($149 annually). Or use the site to find the shows you want to attend or exhibit at, then just search for the show’s website. For example, I found a show called GovSec 2012 in the government section of the industry pages. Then I searched for the GovSec website to learn how to register for the event. Easy! Now get out there and get networking at some events!

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Whatever your goals may be, keep in mind the importance to connect your sales goals with your marketing activities. Don’t wait to do this mid-year or even a month down the road. In order to set off on the right foot, you must be aligned from the get go.

Here are two major tips to avoid miscommunication as you plan your way into success:

1. Align tracking systems: Sometimes your marketing people like to work in Excel or another contact management system while your sales people focus solely on updating CRM. This can cause headaches of all sorts. If there is disconnect between marketing and sales tracking, then they’ll always be a disconnection in your organization. Marketing can’t be effective if they can’t analyze sales results to tie back to marketing activity. In the same breath, sales can’t follow up appropriately if they don’t have background information on a prospect.
2. Define what a lead means to you: There are multiple phases to a sales cycle and they differ from organization to organization. If your marketing people have a different idea of what a lead means to them, then there will always be a struggle when a lead is passed on to sales for follow up. Make sure it’s completely clear with both your marketing and sales departments to what a lead looks like and what the process is for hand-off.

I hope this helps make your planning meetings more effective, setting the stage for a successful and prosperous 2012. Cheers and good luck!

By Bethany Foyt, Project Manager and Writer at The Partner Marketing Group

1. Social for growing email lists. Create contact capture forms on your Facebook and Twitter pages that grab email information to grow your email marketing list.
2. Email for growing fans. Offer deals within email messages to grow your fan base on Twitter and Facebook.
3. Cross channel: Create an Email, Twitter, and Facebook campaign. Companies that have tried this have seen 3x list growth and 5x social growth.
4. **Social for Customer Insights: Use social media to test subject lines to email messages or overall campaign ideas. Social media is the ultimate litmus test for marketing.
5. Social for One-to-One: Use social media as another avenue for customer support. By answering questions where everyone can see the answers gives you more exposure and informs your audience in a non-threatening way.

If you have any questions about how to connect the dots with Email, Facebook, and Twitter, please feel free to contact us for more information. Our services here at The Partner Marketing Group help these marketing pieces fit together more seamlessly.

By Bethany Foyt, Project Manager and Writer at The Partner Marketing Group

Excellent advice from SocialMediaToday on how to better leverage your company’s page on LinkedIn. Note that I said “company page”, not your personal page. Oh…don’t have a company page? If that’s the case, this is a great time to fix that problem.

After you do, check out the tips in the article to make it a better visitor experience. You can…

-          Add your products and services to the company page. Less is NOT more in this case. Be specific about who you help and what problems you solve.

-          Post status updates from your company page. Make them relevant and informational to your followers.

-          Go directly to this page to add the company profile plugin to your blog and/or website.

-          And there’s more at http://socialmediatoday.com/justinthesouth/406452/5-sure-fire-signs-your-linkedin-company-page-sucks?ref=popular_posts.

If you have a little time around the holidays, and the phone isn’t ringing quite so much, it would be a great time to review, update, and polish both your personal LinkedIn profile along with the company version. Good luck!

For more ideas and tips, check out our blog at http://www.thepartnermarketinggroup.com/blog/. And when you do, opt into The Partner Marketing Group monthly newsletter for ideas, tips, tricks, webcasts and more marketing info to help you generate leads and drive demand.