Salesforce Canada

It seems almost unfair to ask sales professionals to think about training and development at this time of year. After all, having spent the last 12 months trying to land new customers and close more details than ever before, this is traditionally when they should be taking a well-earned break. Based on what customers are saying, however, they may not have much time to prepare for the challenges 2016 will bring.

Even if you haven’t been able to start getting in shape by the end of January or achieving some other personal New Year’s resolution, there’s a higher chance of doing better with your professional goals, thanks to marketing automation.

When sales reps look to the new year, they probably think about the new customers they hope to win, rather than how the tools they use will change. Yet the future of CRM could wind up having a lot to do with how they’ll grow their base in 2016.

When owners of small and medium-sized businesses come back to the office after a meeting or other appointment, the last thing they’re going to want to see is a pile of messages waiting on their desk about customer service issues.

A few years ago, it would have been difficult to predict what a strong impact marketing automation would have across organizations of almost every size. The one thing most of us can be sure about is that its growth will only continue over the next 12 months.

Even once sales reps are on social media, though, the tricky part is figuring out which articles, blog posts, white papers, webinars and other content they should share with their followers, and how. These 10 tips should make that job a little bit easier.

We all know that what goes up must come down—which is fine when you’re talking about the law of gravity, but more painful when you’re talking about sales performance.

When customer service is at its worst, it becomes a cycle that goes a little something like this: a customer buys or pays for something, is disappointed, comes back, gets angry, and may carry a little disappointment even after problems are resolved.

If you only have an hour of the sales team’s time, what can you really teach them about how to use social media in their day-to-day work? The answer depends on how well you plan up front to make the education process as compelling and simple to digest as a post on Twitter or Facebook.

For some Canadian small and medium-sized businesses, the leap from traditional forms of demand generation to “content marketing” may already seem hard enough, but don’t let Jessie Coan’s concept of a content scientist intimidate you.