Data is a shockingly underused resource in the modern business world. Despite the fact that most businesses collect it in some fashion, a mere 39% of them are actually making use of their contact data in a productive way. Part of the reason for this may be that this data is not of sufficient quality to be helpful. This is, of course, a tremendous waste. This resource holds incredible potential, and while it does require some active intervention to render it useful, getting your data quality in line up-front sure to pay off.

When you are working on driving revenue growth, your efforts to bring your marketing and sales closer together has never been more essential. In almost every organization, there is a gap between the sales and marketing departments. The first accuses the other of not providing enough qualified leads and the other accuses the first of not providing enough concise information on existing customers and on the various contacts established. But how do you reconcile the two?

Here is a good starting point to establish some ground for to bring your team to work closer together. With these five points, you can create a sense of collaboration in order to maximize their activities, efforts and efficiencies.

Another event is coming up. You are getting ready to go and your entire focus is on how to network and make business connections to promote your brand and build relationships. So how do successful people network and avoid making others cringe?

Here are five problems that you might face in networking events and how to avoid them:

“Acknowledge that if you do not change your method, you will get the same results, if not worse, if your competitors change theirs” - Jack Welch.

You just finished your meeting with a prospect and his response about your product or service was not thrilling. You probably felt this before. So what do you do next? Well, before thinking about what to do next, let us take a few minutes and go through the "not so thrilling" response. Did he tell you he already has another supplier? Or that he is not familiar with your company? Does he need more time? or is he already doing it internally? You would love that last one, because most of the time your biggest competitor is your customer.