Latest from the Intellegentia Blog

I am not going to take the credit for coming up with the title of this blog. Bob Apollo , who I have great respect for, used this term in a really great piece of content about Proactive Pipeline Management. The points raised by Bob regarding the state of sales pipelines which I would like to expand upon I believe will resonate with Sales and Marketing leaders within technology companies.

It's an uncomfortable fact that sometimes when you take off the rose tinted glasses, you discover your pipeline may not look that great.

In this blog we look at what we mean by "flabby" and what can be done about it.

How do you generate quality leads?

If your first answer is email blasts to purchased lists, cold calling, trade shows, seminars, outsourced telemarketing, or advertising then you are officially an outbound marketer.

For technology companies in particular, attracting high quality leads is a top priority. Surprisingly then, 61% of B2B marketers still send all the leads they receive directly to sales, while only 27% of those leads will actually be qualified for a sales call. This is exactly why Inbound Marketing is a growing solution for businesses – a methodology that naturally attracts the right prospects to your brand.

A new breed of marketer is emerging as top B2B Technology Marketing roles are becoming more aligned to those of Chief Marketing Engineer (CME). 

Historically, when developing a campaign, marketers started with the creative side of things.  Now the focus is on data first.  Reading signals from data and analytics, targeting and segmentation of the data based on the specific needs of your buyer persona to lead nurturing and moving your prospects through the decision cycle.  Gone are the traditional advertising, event management and outbound methods of yesteryear. 

But wait… what happened to marketing creativity?