The four elements of the Marketing Strategy component of the Vision/Traction Organizer™ of the Entrepreneurial Operating System® provide a fantastic framework for growing your business. If you don’t remember off the top of your head, the four elements are: Your target...
POSTS FROM AUTHOR
Bill Poole
CRM Benefits for the Whole Organization
Not all that long ago, the decision to implement a CRM involved huge trade-offs. A CRM that was very functional from a sales standpoint had very limited functionality for the operations/customer service team. Customer service applications lacked sales functionality....
Do you need a horizontal or vertical CRM?
Two Types of CRMs There are two types of CRMs: vertical and horizontal. Vertical CRMs are designed to meet specific industries' unique needs and challenges. They provide more targeted solutions to businesses operating in those sectors, with features and...
Connect Your Sales Scorecard to Your V/TO™ Business Plan
Creating a business plan (V/TO™) is a great first step in moving your business to your goals. Putting in place the processes and metrics to enable you to meet those business goals is a journey, but it is a journey worth taking. We call this the "Connected...
3 Reasons To Invest In Clean Contact Data
On the surface, investing in contact data looks expensive. Before you reject the idea, here are three reasons to consider investing in a product like ZoomInfo, and then we will look at a few considerations to help you evaluate...
Benefits To Focus On Cross-Selling To Your Clients
B2B services organizations typically have goals to grow their business. The interesting thing is that they often miss the biggest opportunity to grow that is right under their nose. It is pretty hard to argue that it is a lot easier ot sell to current clients than to...
Why Your Business Needs a CRM to Increase Revenue
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is now crucial for businesses looking to increase their revenue. It allows companies to manage customer interactions by capturing data, tracking interactions, and automating business processes. To scale your sales and...
Tips for Developing an Effective Marketing Message
An effective marketing message is crucial for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. It is the foundation on which your marketing strategy is built and can significantly impact your success. Your marketing message helps to...
The Secret to Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue: Ideal Client Profile
As an entrepreneur, growing revenue and scaling sales is crucial to the success of your business. However, it can be challenging to achieve these goals if you don't have a documented Ideal Client Profile. This detailed description of your target customer will enable...
Using Your Scorecard To Help Your People
Once you are tracking the right metrics, The success of any scorecard is limited by the actions you or do not take when you review the numbers. We discussed a few key points in our recent blog: Things your scorecard tells you about your business: Developing a mature...
3 Challenges You May Be Having With Your Scorecard
Developing the scorecard that works for your business is a journey. There are some common challenges that entrepreneurs face along the way. This blog is written to help you take action to improve your scorecard and shorten the journey. We will look at three common...
Measuring Your Client Experience To Drive Profit
I have seen a lot of entrepreneurial scorecards, and one thing is consistently missing... the client’s perspective. Some businesses track NPS which asks customers/clients how likely they are to recommend the product or service to their friends or colleagues, but...
What Metrics Should You Have On Your Scorecard
The process of developing the right scorecard for your business can be frustrating and is a journey. Does any of this sound familiar to you?: Am I tracking the right metrics to support my business? I have hopeless, long streaks of red for certain metrics on my...
3 Things Your Scorecard Tells You About Your Business
Developing a tight, mature scorecard is a journey worth taking if you want to take your business to the next level. Introducing a scorecard into your business can be frustrating and make you wonder: Am I tracking the right metrics to support my business goals? Do I...
Symptoms That Your Content Plan is Not Working
The importance of content is often overlooked in small businesses. The truth is, content enables revenue generation, and cost reduction: Revenue Generation: Great content enables prospects and clients to navigate their experience with your business quicker, with a...
4 Strategies for Aligning Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing are historically misaligned, which is very curious given their goals are really the same, right? If sales and marketing both have the same goal of bringing more clients into the business, it doesn't make sense that this misalignment still occurs....
[Podcast] Systematizing Sales & Marketing w/ EOS Strategies
Bill Poole was a guest on The COO Show where he chatted with host Bill Reed about why there may be silos in your organization and how to integrate your teams to drive revenue growth. They also talked about how important change management is for creating lasting change...
Leveraging the Buyers Journey in a Services Business
Much has been said about the Hubspot Buyer’s Journey Simply stated, the buyer’s journey is the process that a buyer goes through in making a decision to buy. Hubspot’s definition: The buyer's journey describes a buyer's path to purchase. In other words, buyers don't...
3 Traps to Avoid When Picking The Right Sales Metrics
Metrics are nothing new to successful entrepreneurial businesses. Metrics typically flow throughout the operations and finance departments and drive client satisfaction and business growth. For whatever reason, these same businesses have a hard time inputting and...
When is The Right Time to Hire a New Marketing Team Member?
You might be wondering when it’s the right time to expand your marketing team. With a refined sales and marketing process, it can be pretty transparent on what you should be hiring for. Being particular about which role to fulfill isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Taking...
The Importance of Alignment in Sales and Marketing Messaging
When it comes to sales and marketing alignment, the focus is on ensuring that both departments tell the same company story. Because these two teams have the greatest influence over disseminating that story, there must be cohesiveness between the marketing and sales...
Bring The Right Clients Into Your Funnel: Filtering Criteria
Every business shares similar struggles: there aren’t enough hours in the day, a limited marketing budget, maybe only a few sales team members. It’s important to filter through clients and projects to ensure that goals are being met as efficiently as possible....
Are You Tired of Peaks and Valleys in Your Sales Funnel?
Does this sound familiar to you: Your company’s monthly sales results look like a roller coaster at Six Flags. You're up one month, then down the next. You have a great quarter, and then the next you drop off. Why do we experience the roller coaster ride with crazy...
Is Your Pipeline Based on Opinion or Fact?
When we sit down with our prospects for a first initial meeting, we often discover that they don’t have a defined sales process or experience that they are guiding prospects and clients through. This can be challenging for a couple reasons: It’s difficult for managers...
Does Your Business Have Repeatable Processes to Follow?
If you look around any successful entrepreneurial business, one thing you will consistently find are processes. Well-defined and documented processes for operations, administration and finance are paramount to driving growth. That said, if we look to sales and...
Are You Setting Achievable Revenue Goals?
There's a delicate balance between setting aggressive revenue goals and achievable revenue goals. Of course you want to grow your business, but it is helpful to have some reasoning behind raising the bar to accelerate year over year revenue growth. The same concept...
Client Experience is more than a Vibe
When I say “client experience,” what comes to mind? Take 30 seconds to ponder that question before you read on. Let’s get a bit more specific and go back in time 5+ years. What sort of experience do you recall having with a taxi cab? Compare that to the experience...
Why Do You Need a Content Strategy?
Content is at the heart of sales and marketing communication. As Darrell Amy says in his book Revenue Growth Engine, content is the fuel that feeds the sales and marketing processes that drive revenue growth. Implementing a content strategy ensures that your Revenue...
The Convergo Approach Series: Sales and Marketing Processes
The Convergo Approach Series Part 1: The Difference Between Convergo and a Marketing Agency Part 2: A Strategic Approach Part 3: The Lens of the Ideal Client Experience Part 4: Sales and Marketing Integration Part 5: Sales and Marketing Processes B2B companies often...
The Convergo Approach Series: Sales and Marketing Integration
The Convergo Approach Series Part 1: The Difference Between Convergo and a Marketing Agency Part 2: A Strategic Approach Part 3: The Lens of the Ideal Client Experience Part 4: Sales and Marketing Integration Part 5: Sales and Marketing Processes It is no secret that...
The Convergo Approach Series: The Lens of Ideal Client Experience
The Convergo Approach Series Part 1: The Difference Between Convergo and a Marketing Agency Part 2: A Strategic Approach Part 3: The Lens of the Ideal Client Experience Part 4: Sales and Marketing Integration Part 5: Sales and Marketing Processes Considering the...
The Convergo Approach Series: A Strategic Approach
The Convergo Approach Series Part 1: The Difference Between Convergo and a Marketing Agency Part 2: A Strategic Approach Part 3: The Lens of the Ideal Client Experience Part 4: Sales and Marketing Integration Part 5: Sales and Marketing Processes There's no better way...
The Convergo Approach Series: What’s the Difference Between Convergo and a Marketing Agency?
Marketing agencies help you execute a plan. Or, in the absence of a plan, they create pretty things for you like websites, videos, and brochures. Most of the time, this doesn’t have much to do with your sales team or your company goals. Convergo helps you create the...
How Much Should You Invest in Marketing?
My wife and I were just discussing what we might do for fun next summer. The possibilities are endless! We might go to the mountains, music festivals, mountain biking or the beach to name a few. Figuring out where to spend/allocate/invest time or money is something...
3 Filters for Your Ideal Client Profile
Creating a profile of your ideal client is an exercise that serves many purposes for any business that has limited resources (which is all businesses, right?). Especially in a B2B business, it is much more efficient and profitable to acquire, manage, and delight a...
Is an Inbound Marketing Strategy Right for My B2B Business?
The concept of inbound marketing in its purest form is beautiful! You create relevant content targeted at “personas” and distribute it on digital channels with compelling calls-to-actions hoping your “personas” will find you on. And “Voila!” the leads start flowing...
What is the Quickest Way to Grow Revenue?
We are in the business of helping EOS® companies grow revenue. Over half of the businesses that come to us with that goal in mind are wanting to do so by generating more leads. As we work with clients to develop an initial Revenue Growth Plan, it typically becomes...
How to Put the Marketing Strategy from your V/TO™ to Work
The four elements of the Marketing Strategy component of the Vision/Traction Organizer™ of the Entrepreneurial Operating System® provide a fantastic framework for growing your business. If you don’t remember off the top of your head, the four elements are: Your target...
How to Move the Needle on the 2 Most Impactful Sales Pipeline Metrics
Want to grow revenue faster? Increase your pipeline velocity by reducing the friction between stages. How do you measure this? Here are two sales pipeline metrics to look at that can make a huge impact on your top line on the P&L: Conversion Rate: The % of clients...
Why Your Sales and Marketing Teams Need an Outomes Framework
As we have previously written, Buyers Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Outcomes. I see a perfect example of this as I look out my window into my driveway. I bought a car to get to the places I need to get to support the outcomes that I need: Enjoying our home in the...
How to Conduct An Effective Virtual Meeting
4.7 million people work from home in the United States [source]. The need for collaboration and meeting with co-workers does not go away when people transition to working from home, so it is no surprise that products like Zoom Meeting have realized huge growth. The...
Prospect More Effectively with Sales Sequences
Originally published at the Revenue Growth Engine One touch simply doesn’t cut it in today’s world. Salesforce.com research found that it takes 6-8 touches with a prospect to get an appointment. Sirius Decisions found that it takes 8 to 12 attempts to reach a decision...