Charles Besondy, President of Besondy Consulting & Interim Management, writes... Every company, including my own firm, is working hard each day to find, keep, and grow customers. The urgency for revenue now is real.  But, I asked myself this morning a very direct question. Am I implementing strategies and tactics that are perpetuating this short-term thinking? Or, do I have strategies and tactics in place that will in good time create a consistent revenue flow? Sometimes I have to remind myself that if I don’t want to be in a hole, stop digging! If I want to READ MORE ›

President of Besondy Consulting & Interim Management, Charles Besondy, explores how to get more of the right marketing activity, to the right contact, at the right time... Up to now I’ve been intrigued by how Marketing Automation systems can enable a resource-limited marketing department to execute more lead generation and lead nurturing activities, more systematically, with more rhythm, and do a better job of capturing metrics along the way. To my way of thinking that represents a pretty strong value proposition—more of the right marketing activity to the right person at the right time. I can see READ MORE ›

According to the responses I received in a recent LinkedIn poll (definitely not statistically valid) there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to aligning the marketing efforts of vendors and channel partners. Here is how I posed the questions: Do companies and their sales channel partners struggle to align lead gen plans? Is the alignment of channel partner marketing plans to a vendor’s master plan and MDF strategy a challenge for the vendor and partner? The respondents gave very thoughtful answers and I’ll share a few of the representative comments here. MDF programs READ MORE ›

As I write this the calendar tells me the second half of 2010 is over and there are about 5 months remaining to achieve my annual revenue target. For those responsible for revenue generation it is a tense time. It’s also a time for some healthy retrospection. If your company didn’t experience a breakthrough in revenue performance, or even a healthy incremental increase in the first half, why not? Could the lack of stellar performance be because different results were expected from doing the same old things in Sales and Marketing (only with fewer people and resources)? READ MORE ›