Share what you know with millions of people

Focus is the best place to turn what you know into remarkable content

×

Paul Dilger

Follow Following Unfollow

Director of Product Marketing, The TAS Group

105 points

Product Marketing Expert

Paul is a 20-year veteran of sales, marketing and sales enablement. A graduate of Cambridge University with a North American MBA in Marketing and International Business, Paul has a track record of sales success with small, mid-sized ...

Product Marketing Expert

Paul is a 20-year veteran of sales, marketing and sales enablement. A graduate of Cambridge University with a North American MBA in Marketing and International Business, Paul has a track record of sales success with small, mid-sized and large enterprises, both private and public. He has also run his own sales and marketing consulting practice. As well as carrying a bag and a quota, Paul is also an award-winning copywriter and communicator.

» read more » read less

WEB: Sales 2.0 Network

May 18, 2012

Paul Dilger and 6 other people answered this question at this roundtable

The Status Quo: Defeat Your Biggest Competitor in Marketing and Sales [5/17 @ 1 pm]

How much of a problem is creating prospect-centric messages when marketers have little time to find what prospects really want?

I don't think messages can be prospect-centric if you don't know what prospects really want. That's kind of the point isn't it? more

Status Quo Strategy

May 18, 2012

Paul Dilger and 9 other people answered this question

What will it take to make social media a serious business tool?

It already is a serious business tool, it's just not perfect and is constantly evolving. How one can view LinkedIn as anything other than a serious business tool is slightly beyond me. more

Social Business

Social Media Marketing

May 9, 2012

Paul Dilger and 2 other people answered this question

What is the biggest time waster for Sales Managers?

What we hear a lot from the market is: chasing the numbers. There's no fun in that when across the industry only 50% of deals close as forecast. You might as well guess, and save your time by doing good coaching interventions. Alternatively, get more ... more

Personal Productivity

Time Management

April 12, 2012

Paul Dilger and 6 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Sales Influencers: Part Two [4/12 @ 1 pm]

Does using the term "Sales Influencer" indicate something negative - that you are working to influence in order to obtain sales?

Sorry, I misunderstood! I don't think there's anything wrong with sales and influencer together per se, but I think influencer is that context is a shade redundant. It's kind of axiomatic that a sales professional will use influence in their role. Thought leader, IMHO, is ... more

Thought Leadership

April 12, 2012

Paul Dilger and 4 other people answered this question at this roundtable

Sell More and Save More of What You Sell [4/11 @ 1 pm]

Should data trump 'gut feeling' in sales? Should historical buying behaviours and attitudes weigh more heavily on marketing instead of statistics?

Cale, I think it depends on the quality of the data. The legacy of CRM and SFA systems means that sales people often don't see the value in time-consuming data entry, so the data is often insufficient. Also, without well defined processes in place, which ... more

Online Strategies

Sales Enablement

Jan. 25, 2012

Paul Dilger and 4 other people answered this question at this roundtable

The Future of Selling [1/23 @ 11 am]

How will technology continue to change the roll of the sales rep?

I think technology will continue to revolutionize the role of the buyer, and therefore (with a lag) the role of the seller. In areas where the sales person adds a great deal of value to the sale (so typically B2B sales) the abilities and knowledge ... more

Lead Management

Feb. 28, 2011

Paul Dilger and 8 other people answered this question

What are the top 3 metrics that measure sales performance besides hitting quota/revenue/bookings?

Your sales performance is a function of how successful or productive (read: effective) you are. Sales effectiveness is about sales velocity, how fast you move revenues through your sales organization. When it comes to sales velocity, there are only 4 things you need to worry ... more

Sales Management

Sales Performance

Dec. 21, 2010

Paul Dilger and 12 other people answered this question

Sales Training Best Practices: What are your 3 tips for successful sales training?

We're all hugely busy this time of year, so at the risk of sounding lazy, I'm going to keep my 3 tips short and very sweet:
1) Treat it as part of an ongoing process, not a one-off event. Otherwise you'll just see a quick spike ... more

General Management

Dec. 13, 2010

Paul Dilger and 16 other people answered this question

Sales Enablement: What are the top sales enablement trends to watch in 2011?

Coming to this thread late, but I can't recall a thread before with such a quantity of superb, erudite comments and predictions. I'm not sure there's much new to add here, except perhaps to note that IMHO sales enablement is as much about enabling your ... more

Sales Enablement

Nov. 4, 2010

Paul Dilger and 9 other people answered this question

From ThinkPad to MacBook: how long will it take to get up to speed on a MacBook?

Thanks Scott, glad it was useful. 2 other things to factor in that I forgot to mention:
- you need to have the web services edition of entourage to make it work with Exchange, and I found it a bit fiddly to set up
- because I ... more

Information Technology

Oct. 14, 2010

Paul Dilger and 7 other people answered this question

How long is your Average Sales Cycle?

Tibor, I like your distinction between average sales cycle and the average client acquisition time, very helpful. We see a lot of sales processes, and I mean a lot of them. Thousands. We've found that successful sales cycles were 23% shorter in 2009 than 2008. ... more

Oct. 14, 2010

Paul Dilger and 20 other people answered this question

Would you rather have a VP of Sales who was a great tactician or sales strategist?

Robert, at the risk of being blunt and generalizing: tactician = short term focus; strategist = long term focus. Where would you want the person at the helm of your sales ship to focus? more

Oct. 11, 2010

Paul Dilger published a brief

Sales Training is About Change Management

Aug. 8, 2010

Paul Dilger and 10 other people answered this question

CRM account management features?

Todd, lots of good answers here already. I would echo Ray's comment in that you need to figure out what you want to do before you fit your CRM requirements to that.
If you talk to independent analysts and advisors like www.esresearch.com, they will tell ... more

Account Management

Conversation Tracking

June 1, 2010

Paul Dilger and 7 other people answered this question

What types of marketing campaigns generate the best leads for your company?

Kami
For us (The TAS Group, we help companies sell smarter and manage their business better) the best leads come from free webinars we run that cover our various sales methodologies on opportunity, account and channel management. However, if you ask me this again in 12 ... more

Marketing Campaigns

June 1, 2010

Paul Dilger and 1 other person commented on a brief

Making Time for Social Media

Michael, social media guru @chrisbrogan recommends 2 hours per day as an average on social media. 30 mins listening, 60 mins connecting, and 30 mins publishing. I hope this helps. more

Inbound Marketing

June 1, 2010

Paul Dilger and 3 other people commented on a brief

Building and Managing a Bigger Sales Pipeline

Matt, here's a blog post from The TAS Group (disclosure, I work at The TAS Group) which offers 13 rules of pipeline management, including social networking influences. I hope you feel it adds to the discussion and perhaps complements your original post.
http://sales20network.com/blog/?p=639
Paul more

Marketing Automation

June 1, 2010

Paul Dilger commented on a brief

Focus Speaks: Driving Sales and Marketing Teams’ Adoption of CRM

Joe Galvin of sales analyst company Sirius Decisions says that SFA stands for Sales Force Accounting rather than Sales Force Automation, and many sales professionals would probably agree with this view. The secret to getting CRM adoption is to incent its use, rather than try ... more

Information Technology

June 1, 2010

Paul Dilger and 3 other people answered this question

Sales management software for SFA and customer support?

Sorry Charlie, I'm coming to this thread after quite a while, but can I ask what SFA solution you're using? more

General Management

Information Technology

Customer Support

June 1, 2010

Paul Dilger and 2 other people commented on a brief

Why Sales & Marketing Don’t Speak the Same Language

Good article Becky. Geoffrey James of BNET's Sales Machine has some pretty outspoken views on the gulf between sales and marketing. Well worth subscribing to. more

Internet Marketing

June 1, 2010

Paul Dilger commented on a brief

Data Quality is Your Sales 2.0 Problem!

perramond
Thanks for your post. There's definitely a place for companies like InsideView to provide selling organizations with the quality of data and the feeds from their selling community so that they can make the best possible decisions and be as productive as possible.
We at The ... more

May 24, 2010

Paul Dilger and 46 other people answered this question

Small Business Social Media: Does it even work?

Craig, we're a small business in the sales improvement business, with globally disparate sales force and customer service teams of our own. We have built and integrated our own social media component ('Pulse') into our own sales performance automation platform ('Dealmaker') which itself integrates with ... more

Small Business Consulting

Following 4 Topics

Social Media Marketing

Following 0 People

Followed by 4 People

Knowledgeable in 18 Topics

#12 of 112

#6 of 129

#11 of 168

Information Technology

#299 of 2263

Social Networking

#20 of 125

#404 of 1429

#324 of 1456

#843 of 2984

Sales Operations

#30 of 71

Inbound Marketing

#55 of 119

Sales Enablement

#67 of 157

Social Media Marketing

#116 of 366

#888 of 2156

#14 of 20

Small Business Consulting

#26 of 33

Sales Techniques

#23 of 35

#270 of 419

Sales Management

#256 of 522