Portland, Maine; January 9, 2012 – A new joint venture announced today will help businesses attain strong, sustainable growth in 2012 through a new type of business development training course. The venture is spearheaded by three sales and marketing leaders and will focus on achieving business growth goals through smarketing (sales and marketing integration).
Many businesses treat sales and marketing as separate silos, stunting business growth by dividing business development efforts between the two. The truth is that each division - sales and marketing - provide one half of the total ROI picture. A concentrated synergy is created when sales and marketing are aligned together with customer experience, and the result is a healthy, sustainable business growth driven customer evangelists.
The Smarketing Development Course is a 12-week training program that will help business owners and professionals develop a smarketing strategy, implement their smarketing plan and create customer evangelists that are the life force of a healthy business. The course begins Wednesday, January 11.
“The buyer-seller dance has changed,” said sales development and smarketing guru Rick Roberge. “It’s not about a killer smile, smooth talk, sales tricks, qualifying techniques or 101 ways to close a sale. It’s about understanding where your customer is looking for what and being there with the answers that they’re seeking, and not blowing the sale when they make contact.”
Mr. Roberge is the recently retired “Rainmaker Maker” of the sales development training company, Kurlan & Associates. He has helped hundreds of individual sales people, professional service providers and solopreneurs prospect for better customers, speed up the sales process and create a complete “meeting of the minds” between salespeople and their customers. Mr. Roberge specializes in helping sales people close effectively and completely, strategically manage relationships with clients to develop evangelists and a lifetime of referral business.
“I have been working since I was 12 years old. From a farm hand picking strawberries, to the coffee girl at small mom & pop cafes. From there all the way up to helping fortune 500 companies develop and implement internet marketing strategies as part of high growth business development plans," said Carole Mahoney, CEO (Chief Experience Officer) of Mahoney Internet Marketing (MiM). “All that means is I learn by doing. Add up 26 years of hands on work experience, 12 years of internet sales and marketing experience plus 2 more years of high-dollar sales experience and there you have it. I could not, in good consciousness, not share what I have learned with others. The wild west was not won by one person, it was an evangelic collaboration."
Mrs. Mahoney opened MiM in 2006 to bring the focus of businesses back to the customer experience while helping businesses achieve a measured return on investment in their sales and marketing efforts. She has helped dozens of businesses around the world to get found and create customer evangelists. Ms. Mahoney specializes in helping businesses that compete against market leaders to increase market share and penetrate new markets.
“The changes in marketing over the last few years have been interesting to watch. For the last decade my goal has been to find the best solution to prove ROI for my customers. Smarketing is allowing our clients to hold us accountable in ways they never could before and we love it. Although doing good design is still important for us, Smarketing is allowing us to change businesses and deliver real growth. It is a really fun time be in the marketing industry,” said Dale Berkebile, CEO of BRANDWISE, a marketing, design and brand strategy firm.
Mr. Berkebile helps businesses establish long term goals that help build awareness, increase sales and shorten the sales cycle. He specializes in improving sales and business development with lead generation, inbound marketing and website design and development.
More information about the Smarketing Development Course is available on the MiM website, the Brandwise website and The Rainmaker Maker site.