Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format. With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)

Three in four marketers can't prove their value

A key component of the annual study was the number of marketers earning an 'A grade' from the C-Suite for their ability to measure and report their value to the business. There are a number of things that separate the 'A' marketers from the rest of the pack - in particular:

• 'A' marketers make performance management a priority;
• 'A' marketers have a well-defined and documented roadmap for continuous performance improvement;
• 'A' marketers choose metrics that measure business outcomes rather than effort and activity;
• 'A' marketers build dashboards that effectively communicate business outcomes and marketing results.

The study also found that those marketers earning A grades tend to have aligned their marketing objectives with business priorities, enabling them to select the right metrics in the first place. These best-in-class marketers are leaders who make the market and offering decisions that create value for both customers and shareholders.

Marketers in the middle of the pack (earning B grades) tend to focus exclusively on enabling sales. The B marketers emphasize mapping the buyer journey and producing a steady stream of leads. Albeit important, there is more to marketing than feeding the sales pipeline.

And finally, the laggards - those marketers receiving poorer grades - are more likely to be perceived to be good at producing marketing campaigns, rather than producing business results.

"The data revealed a good correlation between business performance and MPM excellence," noted Laura Patterson, president for VisionEdge Marketing. "It's not the act of measurement itself - all marketers measure things - but it's the alignment and holistic approach to performance management that sets the best-in-class apart from the rest."

Most importantly, companies with A grade marketers tend to outperform their peers. Specifically, 63% of companies with A marketers reported increased customer share of wallet compared to 48% with marketers in the middle of the pack and only 38% with laggards.

As for new business growth, 54% of the companies with A marketers confirmed improvements in their win rates compared to 39% and 25% with the middle of the pack and laggard marketers respectively.

"Interestingly, 'A' marketers are twice as likely to be working directly with the CEO and CFO, and 50% more likely to understand what these senior executives care about," concluded Julie Schwartz, senior vice president of research for ITSMA. "Of course, to get face time with the C-Suite, marketers need business acumen and gravitas: they have to be business people first and marketers second."

Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format.

With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

You'll learn to sell yourself, sell your products, and sell your brand on the internet, writing high-conversion landing pages, social media posts, and more. You'll start attracting customers you didn’t even know existed, and learn the top trade secrets for customer retention.

You'll become a lean, mean selling machine. See how the experts do it and learn to adapt what they've done for your own profit. You'll learn to write strong, powerful, effective sales copy, whether it's for a sales script, sales letter, flyer, insert, advert or just about anything else.

You'll learn how to sell whether you're selling by telephone, by mail, or even meeting prospects face-to-face. You'll find out how to size them up, present yourself, nail down their true needs, close the sale, and learn to tackle the tricky ones.

You'll discover the biggest secrets of successful direct mail sellers, sales letter writers, and how to segment and choose the right prospects for each campaign.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)