The CRAP Report

In response to Chris Brogan’s tweet and subsequent blog post about turning Twitter’s Follow Friday into a more expanded blog entry, detailing why you think people should follow your recommendations, here’s my entry – The CRAP Report’s #FollowFriday list: 

• @dmscott – C’mon, you knew that David Meerman Scott was going to be on this list, didn’t you?  I mean, the guy is a marketing genius, and if you’re not following him, I’d be really curious as to why.

 

• @funnelholic – Craig Rosenberg, the Funnelholic, offers great demand generation information, and presents it in a way that I find really enjoyable to read.  Plus, he’s got GREAT taste in music.

 

• @abneedles – Adam Needles, from SilverPop, offers fantastic data and stats on B2B marketing.  The guy is all over the US running SilverPop’s B2B Marketing University.  He’s like the hardest working guy in marketing.

 

• @gerhard20 – Gerhard Gschwandtner shares great info on Sales topics, from his recent posts about using his iPad for business to Sales 2.0 discussions.

 

• @FearlessSelling – Kelley Robertson, Sales trainer, is always offering ways to be a better sales rep.

 

• @B2Bbloggers – Jeremy Victor’s fantastic website where readers can find tons of different information on marketing insights.

 

• @StephanieTilton – B2B content marketing wiz.  ‘Nuff said.

 

• @bridgegroupinc – Trish Bertuzzi, shares tons of inside sales tips and tactics, straight from The Bridge Group’s blog, Inside Sales Experts.

 

• @damphoux – Mike Damphousse, appointment setting braniac.  You want to know about Unified Demand Gen, follow Mike.

 

• @paul_mccord – Paul McCord, Business Development Strategist and all around nice guy.  For the last couple of weeks, Paul has been on a mission to raise the value of quality sales and marketing content by suggesting people for his Twitter followers to follow, one at a time.

 

• @ardath421 – Ardath Albee, B2B marketing strategist and author of the book eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale.  You can learn TONS from Ardath. 
• @rapril – This is my boss, Richard April.  He told me that he has to go on this list.

If you read The CRAP Report, I really don’t think I’m sharing anything new with you here.  If you’re not following these folks, you should be.  This list is by no means exhaustive; there are a ton of other folks that you should follow as well.  If you have questions about others, let me know!

HubSpot’s blog featured a guest entry yesterday from Sales 2.0 CEO Nigel Edelshain, entitled “What the Heck is Sales 2.0 (& Why Should I Care)?”  Nigel, as I found out in the article, is the man who coined the term “Sales 2.0:”

Sales 2.0 is about sales people using Web 2.0 tools and social media to sell more effectively

In the entry, Nigel goes on to make the analogy that inbound marketing and Sales 2.0 are like children who size each other up before playing together; slow to get along at first, but when playtime is over, nobody wants to leave one another.  The article is great, but of particular interest to me was this, when talking about businesses that sell something very expensive and have a small prospecting pool from which to generate leads from:

“I always imagine a sales rep in this scenario whose boss comes to him and says ‘how are we getting on penetrating GE’ and the rep who loves inbound marketing too much says ‘we’re waiting for them to hit our website and download a white paper.’”

Inbound marketing certainly makes it easier for an organization to be found, but I believe there is still a need for teleprospecting teams to find qualified sales opportunities.  As marketing and sales teams become more synchronous, I think that teleprospecting can play a great part in helping to bridge the current gap, and then be a part of the grease that makes the unified team run smoother.  Go and check it out, then let me know what you think!

*Photo Credit:  ralphbijker via Flickr

With today being December 31st, the last day of the calendar year in 2009, I wanted to continue (but not finish) my countdown, or my top five “wants,” for your teleprospectors in 2010.  If you were here on Monday, you read that my first desire for your BDR’s in the coming year was more confidence.  I’ve shared with you many times over the last four months about the importance of confidence for your BDR’s.  Confidence makes them better teleprospectors – you can’t argue that.  What else, though, should you want your BDR’s to have, though?  Well, good thing you stopped by!  Here are my numbers two and three top “wants” for your B2B lead generators in 2010. Read more… »

You know, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to field the question, “How many calls per day does your team make?”  You know what I want to say?  “It doesn’t matter.”  You know why?  Because it doesn’t.  If you want me to deliver you “X” number of leads per day, and I can do that with making “Y” number of calls, then my team is making just the right number of calls we need to.  If you’ve opted to outsource your lead generation, the most important thing a vendor delivers to you, at the end of the day, is quality sales opportunities.  If they can do that on 5 calls or 500 calls, the leads are what you’re after, right? Read more… »