It’s December 3rd and the most wonderful time of year has begun. The malls are packed, the trees are lit and holiday music is being played. My family’s annual Christmas email chain has also started. This email chain consists of pretty much the same topics every year – what’s the budget for each person to spend and what’s on everyone’s wish list? These email exchanges remind me of some conversations I am having with my clients lately as well. They too are emailing and calling about their budgets for the start of the year and sharing their sales and marketing wish lists with me in hopes of getting a jump start in preparing campaigns for the start of the New Year.
Interestingly, many of the items on my client’s lists seem to overlap with each other. Just like there are trends in consumer items around the Holidays, there are also hot programs that sales and marketing teams seem to be budgeting for as well. Below are some examples of these programs – maybe these are already on your list, or maybe they are ones that you may consider for 2013:
Sponsor more events. Breakfast and lunch forums seem to be attracting many prospects – just don’t forget to pair your email marketing automation efforts with those of your inside sales team or outsourced team to drive even more attendance! Learn more about how to do this here.
Execute upsell campaigns with teleprospecting efforts. Clients continue to share the same challenge with me – they aren’t driving enough revenue from upsell campaigns through email marketing automation alone. While email automation is arguably one of the hottest sales tools out there right now, inside sales teams or outsourced teleprospecting teams can have a HUGE impact on the success of upsell campaigns when mass emails and nurture emails aren’t getting the volume of responses anticipated.
Strategically align inside and outside sales reps. This is a topic that my boss has been discussing a lot lately, and one that clients really seem interested in– even if it means spending more sales and/or marketing dollars to do it successfully. It’s crucial to have the proper amount of resources allocated to each outside sales rep to fill pipeline – the best way to do that is to reevaluate how many outside reps each inside rep is dedicated to. Matt Bertuzzi from The Bridge Group offers some great insight into this topic in his blog, Inside Sales Ratios: Lead Generation Reps to Field Reps.
These are just a few of the most common wish list items my clients have been mentioning. What’s on your sales and marketing wish list for 2013?
