Sales and Marketing - BL - 1

Quick Summary December is crunch time for salespeople and sales leaders. With only a few weeks left to hit your number, it’s tempting to start discounting, but the fastest way to make sales in December is to go back to the people who already know you. Push your stalled proposals,... Read more »

Quick Summary Unused budget is money your customers set aside for this year and haven’t spent yet. In most companies, it disappears on December 31, and a department that leaves money on the table often gets a smaller budget next year. That makes the last weeks of the year prime... Read more »

Quick Summary OutBound 2026 runs November 9-12 at Red Rock Resort & Spa in Las Vegas. It’s a sales training and leadership conference capped at 400 attendees, where twelve of the world’s best sales trainers teach you how to break through buyer resistance, and nobody is allowed to pitch from... Read more »

A fractional sales leader's first 90 days follow a clear arc: a gap assessment, then a rebuild, then a system that runs on its own by day 90. The post The First 90 Days With a Fractional Sales Leader: What to Expect appeared first on Sales Gravy | Sales Training... Read more »

Cold calling is hard, and anyone who tells you it's easy is lying to you. You are interrupting people who were not expecting your call, and some of them will be rude to you. That never feels good. The post The Real Reason You Hate Cold Calling appeared first on... Read more »

Research perfectionism and paralysis are two of the sneakiest productivity traps in prospecting, because they lead to procrastination. The post How Much Research Preparation Should You Do Before a Cold Call (Ask Jeb) appeared first on Sales Gravy | Sales Training & Coaching.... Read more »

A fractional sales manager runs your team part-time, on contract, and does the real job of coaching, pipeline reviews, and holding your reps accountable every single week. The post What Is a Fractional Sales Manager? (And What They Do for Your Sales Team) appeared first on Sales Gravy | Sales... Read more »

Rejection in sales is painful because the brain processes it in the same regions as physical pain. This survival mechanism developed over thousands of years, when exclusion from the group threatened survival. The post Why Rejection Hurts and What To Do About It (Ask Jeb) appeared first on Sales Gravy... Read more »

Some customers cost you more than they're worth, but firing the wrong one can cost you even more. Here's how to tell the difference before you make the call. The post Are Your High-Maintenance Customers Worth Keeping? appeared first on Sales Gravy | Sales Training & Coaching.... Read more »

Every morning a digest lands in my inbox telling me who I should reach out to that day, and why. A new CMO, a few weeks into the job at a company that fits our ICP almost perfectly. A company Read More › The post Twice the Pipeline (And Counting)... Read more »

By: Tom Swanson, Senior Engagement Manager at Heinz Marketing “There is no accountability” is the single most common complaint I hear when working with teams struggling with structure.  Most of the time, I agree.  When something goes wrong in the Read More › The post Improving Accountability in Marketing Teams... Read more »

Every Saturday morning we share some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web from the last week (so it's fresh!). We'll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is Read More › The post B2B Reads: AI Strategy, Content... Read more »

By Brittany Lieu, Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing If you've been through a few annual planning cycles, you already know the drill: audit what worked, align with revenue goals, map content to the buying journey, and build in room to Read More › The post How to Plan Your 2027... Read more »

By Payal Parikh, VP of Client Services at Heinz Marketing I have been on a historical fiction kick lately. I just finished To Kill a Mockingbird and went straight into Go Set a Watchman, both by Harper Lee. Book recommendations are Read More › The post What Go Set a Watchman... Read more »

The volume of chatter about AI among marketing executives and practitioners keeps growing, and more and more of it is about governance and permissions. This includes mandated systems, unapproved platforms and why the tools people use (or want to use) Read More › The post Marketing’s AI Gap Is Widening... Read more »

By Jenn Steele,COO and President at Heinz Marketing “I like marketers more than I like marketing.” I was sitting at breakfast with a couple of fellow CMOs when I said that. They had flown up from Austin the day before to Read More › The post I Like Marketers More than... Read more »

Every Saturday morning we share some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web from the last week (so it's fresh!). We'll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is Read More › The post B2B Reads: Marketing Evidence, AI... Read more »

Every one of your employees holds a big bowl. That bowl is filled with what they believe to be true about their job, their team and their future. If you don't fill that bowl, someone else will fill it for Read More › The post Six Leadership Lessons from a... Read more »

Dreamforce 2026 marked a shift for Life Sciences: from promise to proof. We spent the last several quarters building and selling the vision. Now, we’re helping our customers move from early adoption to…... Read more »

Marketing Cloud Winter '27 has 60+ releases, including agentic campaigns, Personalized Paths in Flow, and flash sending to 5M app users in 90 seconds. Dig a little deeper.... Read more »

Move beyond static spreadsheets and ticket queues. Discover how autonomous AI agents are transforming hardware asset management into a conversational, lifecycle-orchestrated experience.... Read more »

AI inbox management turns your most dreaded daily task into an advantage — here's how small teams are organizing their emails.... Read more »

Want to understand headless software as a business owner? We’ve got you covered. ... Read more »

According to the IDC MarketScape, our strengths include brand and distribution scale, hybrid reasoning with deterministic control, and a native, grounded data foundation.... Read more »

The way customers discover, evaluate, and choose companies has changed. What happens when the signals we’ve learned to rely on don’t tell the full story?... Read more »

Salesforce Field Service is reimagining the mobile work through intuitive workflows and hands-free features.... Read more »

Share My Meals turned to Salesforce Field Service to create a centralized platform for their not-for-profit operations.... Read more »

Salespeople love to talk about being ghosted. It’s become the go-to excuse when a buyer goes silent. But here’s the hard truth: most of the time, customers aren’t ghosting at all. They just haven’t been given a real reason to keep the conversation going. Earning the Right to a Response... Read more »

The health of your pipeline sets the tone for your sales performance. But ask yourself honestly: Is it really filled with true opportunities, or just names and dreams you’re clinging to? Too many salespeople confuse activity with progress, and pipeline quantity with pipeline quality. It’s time to cut through the... Read more »

No need for doom and gloom. The reality is, the most valuable parts of sales are here to stay, and they matter more than ever. Sales isn’t about mass outreach or automation. The future belongs to those who can build trust, contribute value, and create authentic relationships. Here’s how to... Read more »

AI is in your inbox, your CRM, your prospecting tools. The temptation is real. Let AI write your messages, do your research, even handle customer interactions. You’ll move faster, reach more people, close the efficiency gap. But here’s the reality: AI can’t replace your integrity. More than ever, people crave... Read more »

The Human Touch That Crushes Sales Targets On a recent episode of The Sales Hunter Podcast, Mark welcomed Sam Richter, a leading expert in sales intelligence and digital prospecting, to tackle a problem every seller faces: response rates are tanking, and inboxes are overflowing with robotic outreach. What separates meaningful... Read more »

Every sales conversation holds a choice: Stick to safe ground, or ask what really matters. There’s a reason most reps play it safe. Comfortable questions protect you from rejection, but they also guarantee you’ll sound just like everyone else. If you want to win, you need to dare. The best... Read more »

When sales are lagging and the pressure mounts, motivation can nosedive. The easy instinct is to slow down, take your foot off the gas, and hope things will turn around. But that’s not how momentum is built or regained. Staying in the game, even when it’s tough, is what separates... Read more »

On a recent episode of The Sales Hunter Podcast, Mark sat down with Shari Leid, creator of the “Flip the Box” movement, speaker, and author, whose journey from orphaned beginnings in South Korea to deep connection advocate has inspired thousands. Shari joined to break down how limiting beliefs sabotage sales... Read more »

Let’s face it, most sales follow-ups get ignored. It isn’t because prospects hate salespeople; it’s because too many follow-ups add zero value for the customer. The typical sequence? A half-hearted “just checking in,” sent again and again, in different channels, until you’re ghosted for good. Stop being the noise. Start... Read more »

Companies without the internal resources or budget to build a dedicated search department still need to know what options exist for running AEO without a large team. Answer Engine Optimization is no longer optional for companies that rely on search to generate leads and revenue. AI Overviews now appear at... Read more »

The best Claude skills for marketing and sales teams turn recurring work into reusable processes with defined instructions, inputs, and outputs. Claude skills are reusable instruction sets for tasks such as campaign planning, sales call recaps, persona research, content outlining, proposal drafting, and performance reporting. Claude skills save marketers, sales... Read more »

When our blog team made the switch to an AI-first writing model in June 2025, my reaction was split. There was excitement on one side: I could see the inefficiencies in our process that AI might actually fix. On the other, anxiety. And while plenty of that anxiety was about... Read more »

When we reviewed our Japan marketing automation programs last year, the picture wasn’t pretty. Our automated emails were generating about 12 qualified leads per month against a goal of 160. That’s a huge gap.... Read more »

Transactional emails are automated messages triggered by a specific action a customer takes, sent to help that person complete or follow up on something already in progress. An order receipt, a password reset confirmation, or a shipping notification are all examples of transactional emails because each one delivers information tied... Read more »

If you’ve opened Claude’s Customize settings and weren’t sure whether a task called for a Skill, a connector, or a Plugin, you’re not alone.... Read more »

AI Overviews have shifted how audiences discover brands. Gone are the days when users would click through multiple search results until they found what they’re looking for. Now, AI Overviews answers questions directly on the results page, meaning brands are either cited or ignored without users ever visiting a website.... Read more »

Digital PR has always been about earning coverage that influences the audience you can’t reach through paid channels. While the value proposition of digital PR hasn’t changed, the definition of “showing up” has.... Read more »

Clients are asking about AEO. Some have seen competitors show up in AI results and want to know what it means. Others have read that AI is changing how buyers find vendors and want to know what their agency is doing about it.... Read more »

Enterprise brand teams face a complex version of AEO that most tools weren’t built for. A single brand might span a dozen product lines, operate in multiple languages, and compete in markets where local answer engines have their own citation patterns.... Read more »

Buyer behavior has changed since the advent of artificial intelligence. Now, before ever filling out a form or clicking an ad, prospects are likely asking AI for recommendations, comparing vendors, and gathering answers. Those interactions shape which companies make the shortlist, but they often happen outside the systems marketing operations... Read more »

Demand generation has been built around the assumption that buyers will come to a brand when they are ready to learn about its category, whether through search, ads, content, or other channels. The funnel starts when a prospect arrives somewhere the business can see, measure, and influence it. But AI... Read more »

Product marketing’s core job is positioning: Deciding how a product should be described, what category it competes in, and which differentiators matter most to buyers. The results are deployed through sales, content, and campaigns. But now there’s a channel that interprets and rebroadcasts your positioning at scale without asking permission:... Read more »

Marketing leadership decisions used to be about where to allocate resources between known channels like paid, content, events, and email. Each of these channels has established performance benchmarks and predictable customer acquisition cost (CAC) ranges. But now, that framework is getting harder to trust as more buyer discovery moves to... Read more »