The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

The search for qualified, sales-ready leads is a challenge to almost all sales organizations and as technology continues to advance and all of our lives (and our prospects lives) become busier, the need to uncover and nurture qualified leads becomes increasingly more important.

Here at The Center for Sales Strategy we know how busy life can get. We know you can't read every single interesting b2b sales article you come across online, so we like to help our readers out every now and then by pulling together some of our most popular blog posts — just in case you missed them!

Inbound marketing is your ticket to not only being part of the dialogue but having the ability to start conversations with your top prospects and your best clients. This is done by publishing online content through your website and blog, and providing ways for visitors to qualify themselves. Creating content and generating leads are at the core of a successful inbound marketing program and we help businesses every day develop and execute successful inbound strategies. However, you too can start implementing a plan that will help you get found online, fill your lead funnel, and find new customers. 

You’ve been working hard at your inbound marketing program… consistently writing interesting and informative blog posts, optimizing with keywords, promoting through your social media pages, and driving new traffic to your website. But the leads aren’t rolling in like you hoped they would and you just can’t figure out why. What could be the problem?  

My competitive nature to be the best, along with a perfectionist, Type A personality that many marketers and sellers have – oftentimes lead me down the path of over-thinking and over-working every little detail. This meant every email had to be crafted flawlessly, and presentations would sometimes come home with me to be worked on and perfected for the following day’s meeting. I sometimes obsessed over the right words to use with a client and avoided mistakes like the plague.

Here are the 5 most popular downloaded documents for 2013 so far. Have a great Friday and good luck with your planning for next week.

The primary focus of your inbound marketing strategy should be to get your business found by new visitors, and then convert them into qualified sales-ready leads. One of the primary places to do this is on a company blog. There are many other additional benefits such as developing thought leadership and providing value to current clients, but at the end of the day it’s lead generation that makes inbound marketing such an irresistible and powerful tool.  

When I used to sell print ads in a national sports publication I was always a proponent of advertorials when it related products or services needing additional explanation. Clients would be able to use a short "article" to detail solutions to problems or discuss certain issues relevant to the target audience. I thought this was great and usually my clients saw some great results.  

When you think of what characteristics make a successful company, marketing campaign or team there are certain traits and factors that help to sort out the best and worst, the winners from the losers. This is true with inbound marketing and lead generation programs as well.