Harvard Business Review Article Every Marketer Should Read

Nothing like catching up on summer BUSINESS reading. On my list was the July-Aug. issue of HBR. This special double issue on sales is worth searching for; however, if you can only find one article try to get you hands on “Understand What Your Sales Manger Is Up Against” by Barry Trailer and Jim Dickie.

This is a great read and should help any marketer understand the current sales environment. Conversely, sales professionals should read it to understand WHY marketing in important and how sometimes their actions to “protect” their prospects end up killing the sales opportunity.

Some interesting thoughts from the article:

• Ease of access to too much product information via your website can actually turn into a sales barrier.
• Lead generation is the top priority of sales executives, aligning sales and marketing comes in third.
• Research shows that today it takes more leads to win the same amount of business.
• The sales force needs to be more aware of marketing’s activities and needs to better communicate about its own activities to marketing.
• Having and USEING (in every case) a sales process leads to better results across the board.

I know it’s tough to put down the latest book by James Patterson, David Baldacci or Brad Meltzer…but trust me this article is worth it.

posted by Mike Neumeier, APR @ 12:46 PM
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