Ben Bradley

The scenario is fairly typical. You launch your SaaS application for $14.99 per month. A few months later, a competitor launches a competing service for $10 per month. How do you respond with a competitive offer without cannibalizing your existing customers? We asked three softwa... (more)

In his book Business Agility, Michael Hugos says: "Opportunities to make money by being responsive have exploded. There are far more ways to use responsiveness to attract customers than there are ways to use efficiency and low prices. This is because there are so many different k... (more)

Just launched free website that helps small business better measure and manage tactical marketing programs We are looking for beta testers for our new website called MarketingReportCard.com – a marketing measurement dashboard. Designed for small to mid-size businesses, companies... (more)

A wireless broadband distributor buys products from manufacturers and resells them to VARs, WISPs and ISPs. For manufacturers, a wireless broadband distributor often provides many value added services including warehousing, support, financing, training and deployment assistance. ... (more)

The Grateful Dead were light years ahead of the concept of lead nurturing. In one of their early albums, they inserted the following message: “DEAD FREAKS UNITE. Who are you? Where are you? How are you? Send us your name and address and we’ll keep you informed.” The street addres... (more)

When did the job of selling get lumped in with everything else? Asking a great sales person to clean CRM data, lick envelopes and turn over rocks looking for prospects is about the same as asking your attorney to cut the grass – it could be fun but overall, it is not a good use [... (more)

OUR PRACTICES FOR KEEPING DATA CLEAN IN YOUR CRM During the execution of an outbound prospecting campaign, CRM data hygiene is important. I’m going to share one of the processes we use internally to make sure users have a good way to “flag” inaccurate contact records. When we com... (more)

http://zoominfoblogger.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/making-sure-your-data-doesn%e2%80%99t-curdle/ Data, like unrefrigerated milk, goes bad fast. In fact, by conservative estimates 25% of  the database will sour within a year. Add poor import practices and other minor mistakes and bad... (more)

Mark your calendar for March 25, 2010.  TedX is coming to Naperville. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxNaperville, where x=independently organized TED event. At our TEDxNaperville ... (more)

Good data is the foundation for effective CRM. In B2B it is impossible to build strong marketing unless you know the names of the people most likely to buy from you. Maintaining a clean CRM punchbowl requires more than a summer intern. ... (more)

NOTE: Robert Hamilton and I collaborated on this article. It seems every week we talk to just another IT services shop trying to kick-start their marketing and sales process. We sit down with the founder and ask the same question: “so how are you different from all the other firm... (more)

The next Silicon Prairie Social is here – are you ready? Join us for a drink on September 24 from 6 to 9PM at Arrowhead in Wheaton. Ben Bradley will be speaking to the Midwest Entrepreneur’s Forum on September 14 from 6 to 8PM. The topic is Using Trust to Bridge the Sales and Mar... (more)

These are my experiences. The answer to the headline question is “yes and no.” Let me explain by talking about a few different ways we’ve converted social media activity in new business. Later, when I have more time, I’ll talk briefly about a few things that didn’t work. TWITTER ... (more)

Ouch. It hurts. Now what? 1) Ask why? What didn’t we do? It is important to ask the client for candid feedback. The candid feedback is an important opportunity to improve things going forward. 2) Ask “how were we being measured?” Did we both understand the measurement criteria? W... (more)

You reap what you sow. We just signed a new statement of work with a client (now in a new job) that we once fired. She appreciated the fact that we stuck to our guns. Doing a bad deal with a customer is not worth it. Doing the right thing sometimes hurts. No sales person wants to... (more)

by Robert van der Hooning and Ben Bradley NOTE: Robert is a friend of mine who used to teach at Northwestern, University of Chicago and University of Illinois. He’s a former high-tech CEO and President of the International Bankers School in Zurich, NYC and Chicago. This article i... (more)

In my 20 year career, I’ve used nearly every form of B2B lead generation available. To properly evaluate the performance of your marketing campaigns, it is important to know your real cost of a lead. Forrester Research recently revealed that about 50% of b-to-b marketers don’t us... (more)

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/05/10/i-am-sick-of-splogs-copying-our-content/ This is a good article from Mark Ghosh about splogs and Content Theft. What Mark doesn’t talk about is the impact of plagiarism on corporate blog content. How is this content being polic... (more)

The pressure is on. How do you optimize your minimized dollars, eliminate stale marketing efforts, and expand your outreach to prospects?  Focusing on what can be achieved quickly and by leveraging your existing marketing assets. You might be surprised at the results if you focus... (more)

As mentioned in our April newsletter, one of our clients recently asked us for a proposal for an email newsletter program. Instead of paying an hourly fee for our effort, the client wants to pay us for the for the “performance” of the newsletter. That means, they wan to pay for c... (more)