How to align your sales and lead-generation teams

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July 17, 2012 CONNECT WITH SMARTBRIEF Share | Sign up | Archive | Advertise The Leaderboard    Why productive leaders focus on problems and set limits The most productive leaders never lose sight of the problem they're trying to solve and have strategies to keep their team involved, writes Microsoft's J.D. Meier. Success comes when teams are focused on their strengths, ask the right questions, dump perfectionism and limit their hours. "[O]ne of my best managers forced me to set a limit of forty hours. This meant I had to ruthlessly prioritize and focus throughout the week to flow the most value," Meier concludes. MichaelHyatt.com (7/13)       Scan as fast as you work. Scan as fast as 60 pages per minute with the new Canon DR-M160 and increase your productivity with a bigger daily scan volume of up to 7,000 pages. The document quality is improved with a scan resolution as high as 600 DPI. Scan more for less. Sales Strategies    How to align your sales and lead-generation teams One problem that can hurt your sales organization is a lack of alignment with the lead-generation team, writes Vince Koehler. It's important to create a definition of "lead" that everyone agrees with and to have regular meetings between the sales and lead-generation teams, he writes. If salespeople find that a lead isn't quite ready, they should send it back to the lead-generation team. Sales Benchmark Index/Sales Force Effectiveness Blog (7/11)       What factors go into setting quotas? Quotas can be set based on many different methods, but they must support business goals and be achievable, Jim Keenan writes. Start by considering the organization's revenue goals and strategy, and then ask territory managers to offer their projections for the year. A Sales Guy blog (7/16)       4 ways to make your sales training more successful To be successful, sales training must be based on interviews with customers, and it must provide a holistic view of customer behavior, writes Steve W. Martin of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. Besides the rational side of purchasing decisions, sales training "must also explain the psychological reasons customers buy and provide practical real-world examples on how to incorporate the elements of customer behavior into a winning sales strategy," Martin writes. Harvard Business Review online/HBR Blog Network (7/16)       Knowing your customer better comes with undeniable benefits. But challenges arise from behaviorally-targeted advertising with critical caveats on the management of personally identifiable information. Learn to balance profitable marketing, regulation and consumer trust in this FREE white papaer. Daily Data Points  IMF lowers forecast for global economic growth in 2012 and 2013 The International Monetary Fund revised downward its growth forecast for the world economy, from 3.6% to 3.5% for this year and from 4.1% to 3.9% for next year. The IMF warned that the U.S. must not allow major tax cuts to expire right as big spending cuts are scheduled to take effect. Falling off this "fiscal cliff" would trigger "significant spillovers to the rest of the world," the IMF said. Los Angeles Times/Money & Co. blog (tiered subscription model) (7/16), Reuters (7/16), Xinhuanet.com (China) (7/16)       Other News Inventories climbed as sales decreased in May, data show The Wall Street Journal/Real Time Economics blog (7/16)       Mobile search, online video to see large gains in local-media revenue MediaPost Communications/MediaDailyNews (7/16)       More consumers mistrust behavioral advertising privacy policies Adweek (7/16)       Prolonged U.S. drought spurs sharp rise in agricultural futures Bloomberg (7/16)       On the Road  4 travel apps that may prove invaluable to the business traveler They may have slipped your mind, but these four applications could prove invaluable when you're traveling on business: Packing Pro, AllSubway, LocalEats and Triplingo. "You may have maximized your trip for business efficiency, but these apps take care of the little things that can knock your experience out of the park," Lauren Hockenson writes. Mashable (7/16)       App Update  Report: Most people will not allow apps to collect data An overwhelming number of cellphone users would "definitely" or "probably" not let a mobile application gain access to their contact lists in order to recommend that they add certain friends, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who surveyed more than 1,000 phone owners. An even greater number, 92%, don't want carriers to tailor ads for them based on their location. MediaPost Communications/The Daily Online Examiner blog (7/13)       Featured Content    Symantec Software is Crashing PCs Worldwide Courtney Rubin Relationship Selling Is Dead. What's Next? Barry Moltz Is Your Small Business a Target for Natural Disaster? Angela Stringfellow Content Generation Strategies for Small Businesses Walter, Ekaterina, Intel Corp, Social Media Strategist How Secure is Your Small Business' Intellectual Property? Angela Stringfellow Making Small Talk  Goats go surfing in California A man has taught his two goats how to surf and the animals recently showed off their skills at San Onofre State Beach in California. Dana McGregor, who owns the goats, said he thought they would share his enjoyment for the sport. USA TODAY (7/13)       Editor's Note  SmartBrief exclusive from Guy Kawasaki SmartBrief on Sales is proud to share an exclusive chapter from best-selling author Guy Kawasaki's new book, "What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us." In return for updating your SmartBrief profile, we will give you Chapter 2 of Kawasaki's book on Google+ -- "How To Get Started" -- absolutely free. Learn more here.       Position Title Company Name Location Account Manager - Online Ad Sales Publishers Clearing House Port Washington, NY Conference Sales Manager Destination DC Washington, DC Click here to view more job listings. SmartQuote  Truly great sales organizations intimately understand how prospective decision makers think." --Steve W. Martin of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, writing at the Harvard Business Review online       SmartBrief on Sales Partners SmartBrief delivers need-to-know news in over 100 targeted email newsletters to over 3 million readers. All our industry briefings are FREE and open to everyone—sign up today! 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