B2B Sales and Marketing #FriTalks

In-person events are  returning to the marketing mix of many B2B marketers. It always has been one of the preferred tactics for brand awareness, lead generation, community building and more. But, same time very resource-consuming and  challenging to measure. So how do we turn significant internal efforts  and substantial marketing investments into true impact on the sales pipeline?...

IT services can be a highly profitable business in the home market.  However, expanding internationally is a completely different game. In this episode, we welcomed Rinalds Sluckis, CEO of Digital Mind with 18 years of learning and experience in running an IT services business in international markets. Over this time Rinalds has opened and closed sales offices in several  markets and his...

In our new episode, try to uncover the overlooked power of PR in B2B with our guest Mike  Maynard, managing director of Napier Partnership Limited and marketing/PR expert. In our conversation we covered the following topics: 1. What do we understand by PR in B2B? 2. Why should companies include PR into their marketing mix, especially in the digital era? 3. When can PR be most impactful? 4. Ho...

Cloud has introduced many new opportunities for resellers, IT service providers and system integrators, but also new challenges in staying competitive and profitable while scaling the business. In this episode of the B2B Sales and Marketing FriTalks, we explore how to scale Cloud business effectively with Gabor Vass, Partner Business Development Lead at Microsoft. We discuss the role of the resell...

There are over 1000 unicorns in the world today, valued at more than $3.5 trillion combined. What ingredients or variables do successful startups bring in the mix of their dream and company to make it work in the end?  What are the must do's, must have's and must not do's in order to become part of the select group? Our guest Michael Kogeler, Vice President of EMEA Scale-Ups and Unicorns at O...

Cold sales outreach technologies and processes have matured in the last few years. Some companies see results so good that it is difficult to believe. We decided we wanted to get to the bottom of this.   Our guest is Ivars Pavlovics, an "outreach hacker" with extensive practical experience in highly effective sales outreach campaigns for B2B.    In this episode, we discuss the follo...

Every software company wants to think that it is the unique features that make them successful. And every customer wants to believe they make their choices based purely on the ‘best’ product. Both are wrong. As an industry matures, its products all take on the same capabilities. Increasingly, how the product is packaged, marketed, and sold becomes the differentiator. Can the way something is prese...

In this episode, we talk about how the rapidly changing digital landscape and customer behavior redefine requirements for marketing automation as we know it. Our guests are Olha Olifirenko and Sanjulian Nis from the Ukrainian product-led company Newage.io and we discuss: - what trends drive the change and how to prepare for it - what is engagement automation and how it is different from marketing...

This is our 1st-anniversary episode, and we devoted it to discussing the lead generation vs. demand generation approach. During the conversation, Andrejs and Rolands share their insights and try to understand: what is demand generation and how is it different from lead generation? how to measure the success of these two? can one exist without the other? what approach is better for B2B markets? wha...

The Norwegian market is considered one of most desired by many companies, especially in the IT industry. Still, is it worth it and what does it take to succeed in the Norwegian market? We have invited Anneli Andersen, the Owner of Export2Norway, who is helping companies enter the Norwegian market, to share her insights and recommendations. We discussed: - Whether the Norwegian market can give outs...

Making leads flow into your CRM is just halfway to growing sales. Another essential part is to qualify and nurture them so leads convert into paying clients. In this episode of Sales and Marketing FriTalks, we talk about some of the best practices of the follow-up process: Should all leads be followed up When the follow-up should take place How to structure and measure the follow-up process How to...

This time our guest is Kevin Sahin, the co-founder of ScrapingBee, a web scraping API that grew to $1M ARR in 2 years with the help of content marketing. During the conversation, Kevin is sharing his path to creating engaging content for a very demanding audience as developers, particularly we cover the following topics: Finding out what truly matters for your audience Looking outside of mainstrea...

In this episode, we discuss essential marketing and sales strategies for acquiring first prospective customers. We look at both inbound and outbound approaches and talk through the practical aspects of each. This episode can be similarly helpful for early startups and experienced marketing and sales teams.

Market research and industry surveys show that lead generation is the most important marketing objective in B2B. But how to manage marketing and what to reasonably expect from it? In this episode of #FriTalks, we discuss the role of today’s modern marketing from the company management perspective. How to measure and benchmark performance, how much revenue to budget for marketing, what results to e...

This time we are delighted to have Inga Sartauskaite joining us for a Sales and Marketing FriTalks to share her insights on building a repeatable and remote sales practice. Inga is a Sales Director for Central and Eastern Europe at Companial (formerly known as 1ClickFactory). Together with Inga, we try to figure out: - Is building a repeatable business practice different than traditional sales pra...

In this episode, we have Vedran Soloja joining us to talk about what it takes to make prospective buyers not only recognize the problem but also take a step further and act on solving it. Vedran is Senior Marketing Communications Manager at Microsoft, responsible for demand generation for security and productivity solutions in Central and Eastern Europe. During the conversation, we dig deeper into...

Any marketing is worth only as much as its ability to support the company’s sales. Therefore, strong alignment between marketing and sales is critical to benefit from a modern marketing approach. In this episode of #FriTalks , we look at modern marketing from the perspective of sales. Our guest is a multiple award-winning sales expert, trainer, and author of two books Vigants Lesausks . Vigants ha...

LinkedIn indeed is the best place to meet and engage B2B audience, but how to build a solid ground for your brand on the platform and make your marketing efforts profitable? For this #FriTalks episode, we invited Ketrina Ozola , Linkedin marketing strategy manager at Httpool, to discuss key building blocks of a successful LinkedIn strategy for Tech companies. In the episode we talk about: - Best p...

In this episode first, of #FriTalks in 2022, we look at the latest developments in B2B marketing and, together with guest experts, discuss a strategic approach to growing business in 2022. In particular, we discuss the following priorities: Sales and Marketing Alignment Lead generation vs. building trust and creating demand Adoption of martech stack

In this episode, we welcome back Gints Mednis, a very experienced partner channel manager with a track record of building Sonarworks' global partner channel from scratch. Not every company needs a partner channel, but a partner channel can be one of the best ways to scale their business for those who do. In this episode, we discuss: - How to evaluate if you need a partner channel at all? - How to...

There are tons of different KPIs on the marketing and the sales side. And it can easily occupy most of your time and resources to measure and report on them. But what exactly does it make sense to measure and why? In this FriTalk, we discuss the most important KPIs to monitor at different sales and marketing pipeline stages. We also talk about how even minor changes in the performance of one eleme...

Our guest is Evgeniya Chernetskaya , CMO at Microsoft, responsible for marketing execution in 24 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and we discuss marketing and sales approach in the enterprise space. During our conversation, we discussed the following topics: • How marketing and sales are different in Enterprise vs SMB • Can the sales team alone be successful? • Pre-requisites for fruitful c...

An average company pays for 137 SaaSes, and this number is growing by 30% annually. So a new one replaces something, something built on, something new bought to solve new problems - and this process is similar to how a person climbs up Maslow's pyramid. In this episode, we discuss the concept with Andrey Burlutskiy, Head of Marketing at Master of Code Global. We try to figure out how SaaS companie...

In this episode we continue the discussion with Olga Bakanova about building social media marketing for B2B companies, we will discuss the approach B2B companies should consider for building the audience. In particular, we talk about: can we trust recommendations coming from media channels how to determine which channels are right for your activities what insights we can get from social media to b...

This time, we invited Olga Bakanova to discuss the role of Social Media in business development and understand how to make it a truly effective part of the overall marketing execution. Olga had an integral role in the Microsoft marketing strategy and led the social media hub, focusing on 33 countries from Central Europe Europe to CIS. She is eager to share her strong IT marketing experience in B2B...