MarketStar Blog

Do you think of sales as a sprint or as a marathon? For today’s successful business, you have to be a marathon runner. The sales model has evolved from the old-fashioned quick close to a more substantive, solution-based strategy. Today’s successful sales model is committed to ongoing customer success, so closing the deal is just step one.

When you have a channel partner program, you need to rely on your channel partners to manage not only customer sales but also the overall customer experience. In the age of software as a service and recurring revenue models, everyone in the value chain has to assume responsibility for customer success. However, your channel partners are on the front line, since they closed the sale and are the first line of defense for customer fulfillment. Therefore, the vendor’s job is to enable channel partner success in order to optimize the customer’s experience.

Every successful business is focused on promoting customer satisfaction and optimizing customer experience. Every organization that offers a product or service needs to offer training and customer support. However, too many fall short of supporting customer success.

Change is inevitable; in fact, it is essential for businesses to grow. However, not everyone is willing to embrace change, and even if they are willing to accept change, they may not see things your way. That’s why stakeholder relations have to be a key component of any business or change management strategy. It’s important to have everyone involved on board with the new strategy, policies, and procedures so the entire team is working toward a common goal. When making plans for 2019, you want to be sure that everyone involved shares the same vision and objectives.

Titus, current MarketStar President and COO, to replace Dave Treadway who is retiring December 31, 2018

Understanding Sales Enablement 

What is sales enablement? According to Forrester, ‘Sales enablement is a strategic, ongoing process that equips all client-facing employees with the ability to consistently and systematically have valuable conversations with the right set of customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle to optimize the return of investment of the selling system’.1 

Much of what’s been talked about so far seems, at first glance, to lie far off in the possible future. But, as most experts point out, the Internet of Things is already here. While adoption barriers may affect the pace with which widespread adoption of IoT technologies occurs, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the transition to a hyper-connected economy is inevitable. The question then is, how does an organization transition from where it stands today, with varying levels of integration with digital technologies, to this hyperconnected future?

So, you’ve heard that Customer Success is the new industry buzzword, and read a dozen articles on how you’re company can benefit from focusing on it. But where do you go from there?

In today’s world of instant messaging, customers don’t like to wait. Businesses are looking for solutions that help them provide instant service. Live chat is one such solution to which many are turning. According to Gartner, by 2018, over 80% of companies will offer some form of live chat on their website or on mobile devices.

The mobile landscape is constantly evolving, urging marketers to incorporate new technologies into their campaigns and customer engagement strategies. Marketers are leveraging these advancements not just for running campaigns but also for gaining valuable customer insights that help build loyalty. It's clear that brands that adopt new technologies will thrive in today's competitive world.