Professional Services Marketing & Selling

All of us love stories. That includes your buyers. Stories tap our emotions and compel us to want to do something, and you can use them to motivate your prospects. The key is to tell great stories. To do that you must first understand the buyer's goal. Listen as Adrian Davis discusses why stories are effective in sales, when to use stories, and things to be careful of when telling stories.

Buyer behavior and needs have changed. That means service firms must update their sales process to accommodate those changes. That means they must genuinely put buyers at the heart of all business development activity, says David Tovey, author of Principled Selling. Listen as Tovey explains how concepts of his Principled Selling Approach enable firms to do that.

Thanks to social media, word of mouth has been "massively amplified." Where once talk about favorite restaurants or companies were limited to the few people around the water cooler, now millions of people can hear about an experience you had with a business. That doesn't mean companies have to sit by while this happens. Listen as Rob Fuggetta explains how companies can tap this powerful source and use passionate customer as advocates and "virtual marketers."

When sales and marketing are aligned, you have faster revenue cycles, happier customers, and higher employee morale. Many times, however, that alignment is not there. To get the two groups aligned, Christine Crandell, President of New Business Strategies, suggests following these seven steps.