Closing Time: quick insights from sales & marketing experts

How can you be creative, have fun, and let your personality shine in sales? Would you believe it's by cold calling more? In this episode of Closing Time, we welcome Daisy Chung from Orum, who is on a quest to make outbound sellers love cold calling. Daisy shares her own experience in learning how to cold call effectively and provides insight into how cold calling has become significantly easier in...

When you hear the word 'influence,' who do you think of? The person on LinkedIn with 100k followers? The SaaS company that hires a thought leader to advocate for their product? People can be 'influencers' without necessarily having real 'influence.' In the context of B2B, brands (and their leaders) who have influence focus on elevating others, rather than themselves. In his book, "Secrets of Influ...

Talking less and listening more—a proven method to increase win rates among B2B sellers, and a mantra all GTM leaders want their sales and customer success reps to practice.  When you arm your reps with powerful questions, it helps them engage and better understand their buyers, ultimately, leading to more opportunities to acquire, keep and grow revenue. In this episode of Closing Time, customer d...

The data doesn't lie: If you are not in the consideration set for a buyer before they begin their buying journey, you have less than a 5% chance of closing that deal. It pays to be top of mind, and B2B marketers do that with brand awareness. In this episode of Closing Time, Insightly CMO Chip House speaks with Dale Harrison, a B2B marketing strategist, on why sales leaders should support and encou...

When is the right time to review your go-to-market motions for effectiveness? When is a change of motions in order? Many go-to-market leaders get this wrong by waiting until a crisis or downturn and pivoting in a panic. In this episode of Closing Time, Chris Rack, a sales leader and CEO of the demand gen firm MPR, shares his insights from decades of experience in B2B sales and marketing to help vi...

Increasing Average Contract Value (ACV) can help your business grow faster while staying efficient. Think of it this way: all deals take time, but a $10K deal doesn't take ten times more work than a $1K deal. By increasing your ACV, you can grow your revenue without adding more people or technology. As such, ACV is a key metric in the health of a business - particularly in a recurring revenue SaaS...

Your company is on a roll; you're selling your product and beginning to expand, but you're struggling to align on what to do next. How do you decide on messaging? In what order should you execute your marketing plan? What is your unique value proposition, and how can you add marketing as a strategic partner to your go-to-market plans? Jennifer Zick, founder and CEO of Authentic, joins Closing Time...

Can you afford to do audience research? The better question may be, can you afford NOT to? Most marketers are doing typical market research right, but when it comes to audience research, they're missing the mark. Audience research is exactly what it sounds like: Discovering who your audience is, what they pay attention to, and what sources influence them (publications, podcasts, YouTube channels,...

B2B buyers are making one thing clear: They want to research on their own before engaging with a salesperson. What's shocking is how far into the funnel they get alone, as much as 83% of the way. We call this the 'dark funnel' (also referred to as dark social), and on this Halloween episode of Closing Time, we're going to break down how marketers can unearth and track what's going on in the hidden...

When done well, a product launch can propel your business forward, engage your prospects, and drive adption. In fact, 79.5% of companies reported launches had a significant impact on revenue.  The challenge? Orchestrating a successful product launch can be a painful process for product marketers – they require robust research, careful collaboration, and (ideally) a well-thought-out launch checklis...

The perfect sales call…does it really exist? The team at Gong Labs might be able to answer. They have analyzed one billion sales calls to help sellers like you build trust, keep buyers engaged, and, ultimately, close more deals. On this episode of Closing Time, we welcome Udi Ledergor of Gong, who will provide actionable tips that you can start using tomorrow to make your next sales call better. H...

In the age where personalization and understanding sales prospects shows a big improvement in close rates and deal sizes, why is it that most reps still don't do enough research? In this episode of Closing Time, Chip talks with Justin Fite of J3 Consulting about a new way to conduct sales prospects research, how sales and marketing can align on ideal targets, and how sales reps can use this inform...

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool for salespeople, but like any app, you've got to stay up to date. Recently released features have resulted in some changes that can help sellers streamline the process of finding new leads and making more connections. In this episode of Closing Time, we welcome Mandy McEwen, founder of Mod Girl Marketing, to talk us through LinkedIn Sales Navigator tips...

When your solution makes it on the agenda of your prospect's weekly meeting, you've got a good chance of closing that deal. But how can you get your solution or service considered at that level? In this episode of Closing Time, Hannah Ajikawo, CEO of Revenue Funnel, talks through the pre-work you'll need to do with your prospect and the questions to ask to become a trusted advisor. Learn how to 'b...

If you're currently using a one-size-fits-all sales funnel (that ignores buyer intent or pipeline source) and is focused on top-of-funnel metrics like MQLs... it's time to rethink your strategy. The 'old' sales funnel, originally coined as the Demand Waterfall by SiriusDecisions in the early 2000s and then later revamped in 2012, fails to acknowledge that all MQLs and SQLs are not created equally....

Demand capture vs. Demand creation – two of the most important areas of focus for today's marketers. Demand creation (aka demand generation) is about driving awareness and interest in a product or service, while demand capture focuses on attracting and converting the roughly 5% of your target market actively looking for a solution. Familiar marketing frameworks – like the Predictable Revenue and D...

"What are we getting for our ad spend?" This question is getting even more difficult to answer since the death of marketing attribution as we know it is looming. GDPR and CPAA have killed third-party cookies, and almost all privacy laws are getting even more strict. Will it be a return to the metrics of impressions, views, and engagement? In this episode of Closing Time, Rand Fishkin, CEO of Spark...

Sales professionals – are you struggling to build consensus? Today's B2B sales cycles are complex and include more decision-makers than ever before. According to recent data, 11.2 stakeholders take part in every deal. Unless you can convince the entire group of stakeholders to buy from you, there's no way the deal will close. But how can you receive a resounding "yes!" from all parties involved? I...

"You've got to be posting on LinkedIn." Depending on your target audience, this may or may not be true. In this episode of Closing Time, Insightly CMO Chip House meets with Kyle Coleman, SVP of Marketing at Clari, about how salespeople can start to build your personal brand on LinkedIn. They explore ways to determine content (based on your experience, expertise, or from industry leaders), the impo...

Video selling is on a steep growth curve, so why isn't everyone on board? You can equip your salespeople with the hardware and software required and train them, but they still may not be comfortable with the process. In this episode of Closing Time, we welcome Tyler Lessard, VP of Marketing at Vidyard, author of the book The Visual Sale, and host of The Sales Feed podcast, to talk us through ways...

You've worked on your personal branding on LinkedIn, and now you're looking for tangible results. How do you go from reaching out to someone in your ICP to counting them as a customer? In this episode of Closing Time, we welcome Mandy McEwen, founder of Mod Girl Marketing, to talk you through her 4-step engage - connect - post - repeat process for LinkedIn social selling. She'll share tips for usi...

On average, 40-60% of B2B sales opportunities are lost to the status quo objection. We're not losing to competitors as frequently as we're losing to customer risk aversion – aka the customer's gut feeling that regardless of how much "better" our solution may be, the road to "better" involves change, cost, and productivity losses. In this episode of Closing Time, Jen Allen, head of Community Growth...

People used to believe that marketing was art and sales was science, but today's professionals know both need a little art and science to get the job done. Kyle Coleman of Clari has first-hand experience and insights on making the sales to marketing career shift. He is a former salesperson who now leads a marketing team. Join Kyle in this episode of Closing Time, where he talks about the ways mark...

Video selling can be the secret weapon to propel your sales team to higher conversion rates. Think video selling is just about prospecting? Well, you'd be wrong. The attention-grabbing power of video can have impacts at all stages of the sales cycle – from the initial outreach to personalized demos and proposal walkthroughs. In this episode of Closing Time, we're joined Tyler Lessard, VP of Market...

How do you know if you're buying old technology? Are legacy CRM systems focused on enterprises, leaving small and midsize businesses flapping in the wind? As organizations look to make a CRM purchase, it's time to dig into what's going on in the market's biggest players and make an informed choice for what is the single source of truth for your business. In this episode of Closing Time, Chip welco...