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Most sales teams don’t realize how much ground is lost before they even speak to a lead. People don’t wait around for a discovery call to figure out if you’re a good fit. They do that on your website. That’s where they start building trust, checking if you understand their problems, and sizing up your product against others. This means your site serves a bigger purpose than just attracting interest.
The post Why Social Media Belongs in Your Sales Funnel appeared first on ClickFunnels. TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook: these platforms might not immediately come to mind when mapping out your sales funnel. But judging by where your potential customers spend their time and how they discover businesses today, it’s clear why social media should be part of your conversion strategy.
Salespeople have to prospect. That's the truth. Salespeople can find their prospects in lots of different ways: introductions, social media, networking, lists, internal referrals from business partners, cold calling, pre-approach email, association memberships, and business networking groups. What is also true is that no matter how a salesperson gets a name, the next step is to contact them.
As we wind down 2025’s second selling quarter, we can check our performance versus our YTD quota to see exactly where we stand. That’s the beauty of selling and the pay-for-performance lifestyle, isn’t it? There’s no mystery about where you stand. Your YTD number is there in bright lights and it’s reflected not only in your compensation but in how you feel about yourself.
Speaker: Brendan Sweeney, VP of Global Sales at Allego
In a world where buyers are more informed and objections are more nuanced, confidence isn't optional—it’s a competitive advantage. In high-stakes conversations, knowing how to handle pushback can make or break the deal. Join industry expert Brendan Sweeney for a behind-the-scenes look at how teams are transforming sales coaching with real-time feedback, objection-handling role plays, and pre-call preparation that actually sticks.
The AI revolution is coming fast – it’s reshaping industries, redefining workflows, and promising unprecedented growth to sales organizations. Yet, many leaders are hesitant to make a big bet on AI. The wrong move could cost you time, revenue, and credibility. With the right foundational strategy and the right tool, AI should be a sales force multiplier enabling your teams to sell faster and more proficiently, bringing more value to customers and more impact to revenue.
We are obsessed with eliminating the friction! We want to create frictionless experiences. We fetishize efficiency. We leverage technology to do the work. We strive for easy. But what if we were to shift our point of view? What if we recognized that friction isn’t our enemy, but it’s our source of value? Permit me, for a moment, to revert back to my training as a physicist.
Making the best targeting decisions can have a compounding effect on return on ad spend (ROAS), according to new data released this week by TransUnion. According to the TransUnion analysis, the upside in ROAS from better targeting could be as high as 9x. TransUnion used real-world campaigns from 25 of its measurement clients across five verticals and found a widening performance gap as audiences became more targeted.
Making the best targeting decisions can have a compounding effect on return on ad spend (ROAS), according to new data released this week by TransUnion. According to the TransUnion analysis, the upside in ROAS from better targeting could be as high as 9x. TransUnion used real-world campaigns from 25 of its measurement clients across five verticals and found a widening performance gap as audiences became more targeted.
That's the question every sales leader, CEO, and HR department is wrestling with as AI tools flood the market with promises to automate everything from prospecting to closing deals. Meanwhile, salespeople are panicking, wondering if their jobs are about to disappear to some algorithm that can write emails faster than they can type "Dear Valued Customer.
Why 40% Cloud Adoption Marks the End of Easy Growth. And why the AI budget war is just getting started Top 5 Takeaways 1. The 40% Tipping Point : With 40% of workloads now in the cloud, SaaS has hit market maturity. The easy growth is over—companies like Zoom exemplify this with saturated markets and nowhere left to expand rapidly. 2. AI is Eating SaaS Budgets : Companies like Cursor are generating massive revenue by replacing traditional SaaS workflows entirely.
All our customers are critical to our success. We strive to retain, renew, grow, and expand those we currently have. Every deal in our pipeline is important to us and our ability to achieve our goals. But what would happen if we were to disappear? In our current customers, what would happen if we disappeared? Would they just find a substitute product and move on with no impact?
Every day, we hear how AI is reshaping marketing. Need 100 social posts tomorrow? Done. Launch a campaign before lunch? No problem. Automation is accelerating everything — but speed alone isn’t a strategy. In 2025, 88% of digital marketers use AI in their daily workflow and the AI-in-marketing market is set to hit $27 billion this year. The broader AI industry?
Speaker: Jady West, VP of Hospitality & Chris Bennett, Head of Sales & Engineering
The modern hotel room is no longer just a place to stay—it’s an experience to remember. Today’s guests expect seamless 5G connectivity, personalized comfort, and high-tech convenience. From AI-powered smart room controls to in-room entertainment and app-based services, technology is redefining hospitality from the inside out. In this new session featuring industry pros Jady West and Chris Bennett, we’ll explore how high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity powers the innovations that are enabling
Traditional user experience (UX) work assumes you’re designing screens that will be built exactly as drawn. But generative development is changing that assumption entirely. With AI systems now able to assemble interfaces and create dynamic user experiences on demand, designers must move beyond familiar practices to embrace this fundamental change.
The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Dennis Lyandres is an Advisor with ICONiQ and a Board Member of Speedchain and CaptivateIQ. Dennis amassed incredible insights through his experience as the Chief Revenue Officer of Procore, where he helped grow the company from $10M to $900M+ in revenue and guided it through a successful IPO.
Dear SaaStr: Should I Hire a Sales Consultant as My First Sales Rep? No, you shouldn’t hire a sales consultant as your first sales rep. Here’s why: As the founder, you need to be the one to close the first 10–20 customers yourself. This isn’t just about getting deals done—it’s about deeply understanding your sales process, your customers, and what works (and doesn’t) in your pitch.
For the past several weeks, I’ve been writing some fairly esoteric/philosophical things. Talking about entanglement, durable revenue, rethinking value, and that value is in the friction. But most of you know me as a “ruthless pragmatist.” You are probably confused–and you should be. So I’m embarking on a series of articles, moving from philosophy to practice, theory to execution.
Retailers know the clock is ticking–legacy SAP Commerce support ends in 2026. Legacy platforms are becoming a liability burdened by complexity, rigidity, and mounting operational costs. But modernization isn’t just about swapping out systems, it’s about preparing for a future shaped by real-time interactions, AI powered buying assistants, and flexible commerce architecture.
Three major surveys released between Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 offer distinct yet complementary views on martech and organizational readiness: The CMO Survey (Duke University). MarTech’s State of Your Stack Survey. Gartner’s CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey. Despite differences in methodology and audience, a cross-analysis reveals troubling patterns in how organizations navigate technology transformation.
Fire Your Top Salesperson: The Red Sox Lesson for Better Sales Teams What if firing your top salesperson would make your sales team better? The Boston Red Sox showed the world how to do it this past weekend. I know you might not care about the Red Sox or even baseball, but this is worth reading because there’s an amazing lesson here. The Red Sox were in the midst of a five-game winning streak and had just completed a three-game sweep of their arch-rival New York Yankees when they traded their be
This has not yet been announced, but I was looking at Nimble’s import routines in preparation for a client meeting and … there is now an option to “Import Resume”. Interesting:) I decided to test it out to see what it might do. What is a LinkedIn profile? It’s a resume. So, I created a PDF of a person’s profile and I uploaded it. Nimble parsed that information, via AI, and created a perfect contact record!
Dear SaaStr: How Do I Hire a Great First 1-2 Sales Reps? Hiring your first AE (Account Executive) is a pivotal moment for your startup. It’s not just about finding someone who can sell—it’s about finding someone who can sell your product in the messy, unstructured environment of an early-stage company. "Never, ever hire a VP of Sales until you have 2 individual sales reps really closing.
Documents are the backbone of enterprise operations, but they are also a common source of inefficiency. From buried insights to manual handoffs, document-based workflows can quietly stall decision-making and drain resources. For large, complex organizations, legacy systems and siloed processes create friction that AI is uniquely positioned to resolve.
Great sales conversations don’t just happen. They’re crafted. Ask any top-performing financial advisor their secret to closing more clients and you’ll hear a consistent theme: preparation. But here’s the kicker: most advisors do prepare. They prep to share data. They prep their questions. They might even rehearse their pitch. What they often don’t prep for?
Marketers, and B2B marketers in particular, often face criticism for focusing on vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are numbers that are easily measurable and look good on paper but don’t directly correlate to business outcomes or provide actionable insights. Let’s take a closer look at seven common vanity metrics, why they’re considered weak and what you can use to replace them.
This article sounds like a beast, but it’s one of the shortest I’ve ever written. My backup title was Adventures in Account Management , but I didn’t want to get too cute. Here we go! I was at the optometrist’s office, waiting for my broken glasses to be fixed, when SHE walked in. She approached the receptionist and said, “I’m the new rep for a frame company, and I stopped by to introduce myself.
You don’t have to be the most intelligent person in the world to realize that people are distracted and can easily lose focus in times of turmoil. The headlines scream something new and unexpected every day, ranging from tariffs, wars, regulatory shifts, and political upheaval, while everyone is still expected to wake up, go to work, and cope with it all.
B2B marketers face a number of challenges, including: continuously generating great leads converting leads to active sales prospects finding vendors that deliver real results Aggregage has proven content syndication, webinar, online advertising and intent signal marketing programs that deliver higher-quality leads. More than 700 companies have already benefited from our programs.
I see it happening everywhere. Board meetings where someone inevitably asks, “Don’t we need a VP of AI?” I saw a term sheet the other day where a leading VC firm reserved $1m of the round … for hiring a “VP of AI” Leadership teams scrambling to post job descriptions for “Head of Artificial Intelligence.” Recruiters cold-calling anyone with “machine learning” on their LinkedIn.
As a business owner, sales isn’t just a job — it’s baked into everything I do. Pitching clients, negotiating partnerships, growing a network. You can’t escape it. And if you’re looking for a sales role? Same story. The job market is crammed with candidates all claiming to be “results-driven” and “customer-focused.” But recruiters and sales leaders? They’re wading through stacks of near-identical resumes, making snap judgments on who’s worth a second look.
Large Language Model (LLM) agents aren’t very good at key parts of CRM, according to a study led by Salesforce AI scientist Kung-Hsiang Huang. The report showed AI agents had a roughly 58% success rate on single-step tasks that didn’t require follow-up actions or information. That dropped to 35% when a task required multiple steps. The agents were also notably bad at handling confidential information. “Agents demonstrate low confidentiality awareness, which, while improvable th
You’ve invested considerable time and money in your service organization. But are you seeing a significant return on that investment? Are AI innovations like Agentforce delivering the impact you expect for your business? For the past eight months, Agentforce on Help has been providing our customers with faster answers and expert guidance when they need it, without them having to search through pages of content or wait on a support ticket.
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
By popular demand – my three top tips of the last year… This week – Asking for the Close! Let’s face it: Asking for the business can be terrifying for … The post My Top Tips – Asking for the Close first appeared on Colleen Francis - The Sales Leader.
So Okta rose to rapid growth and IPO as the stand-alone leader in enterprise identity for apps, acquired Auth0 to own it for developers, and now coming up on $3 Billion in ARR, it has settled into a more mature state: $2.75B in ARR Growing 12%, projected to slow to 10% Non-GAAP operating margins of 27% Free Cash Flow margins of 35% (!) $18B market cap, so ~6x ARR Net net it’s a story of new customer growth of 7% combined with slowing NRR of 106%.
Most go-to-market (GTM) initiatives aren’t failing—they’re flying blind. When analytics live in siloed systems, it becomes nearly impossible to understand what’s working and what’s not. Managers can’t coach effectively. Organizations struggle to identify performance gaps and scale success. Without unified insights into GTM performance, even top-performing organizations risk falling short.
I’m no stranger to marketing strategy, messaging frameworks and the kind of narrative clarity that makes a landing page convert. The challenge comes when I send the copy to a developer. Without a UX designer in the middle, I have limited means to show the visualized page, leading to endless rounds of back-and-forth, meaning my creative momentum tends to hit a wall.
Today’s buyers expect more than generic outreach–they want relevant, personalized interactions that address their specific needs. For sales teams managing hundreds or thousands of prospects, however, delivering this level of personalization without automation is nearly impossible. The key is integrating AI in a way that enhances customer engagement rather than making it feel robotic.
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