Pelin Thorogood Named One of 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management

When it comes to optimizing the marketing mix to generate the highest quality and volume of sales leads, few can match Pelin Thorogood’s expertise. This was confirmed in April when the Sales Lead Management Association (SLMA) named Pelin as one of the 20 Women to Watch in Sales Lead Management.

Pelin joins a distinguished list of winners, including: Ardath Albee, Marketing Interactions; Lisa Arthur, Aprimo; Jeanne Hopkins, HubSpot; Maria Pergolino, Marketo; Jill Rowley, Eloqua; Jenny Vance, LeadJen; and others. See the full list.

Pelin expertise in sales lead management is forged by her background in web analytics, social media marketing and sales intelligence. During the more than years she has been advising InsideView, a sales intelligence leader, Pelin played a prominent role in helping define and nurture the Sales 2.0 movement, and recently went on to evangelize social selling. Prior to founding Schulman+Thorogood Group that, she served as SVP Marketing at web analytics and online marketing optimization pioneer WebSideStory, now part of Adobe Systems.

Pelin first wrote about Sales 2.0 three years ago in this article in InsideCRM: “Sales 2.0: How Will it Improve Your Business?” She later teamed with partner Rand Schulman to write about how to market to customers in the social era for her alma mater, Cornell University: “The Birth of Customer 2.0 & The Death of Marketing as We Know It.”

Congrats Pelin!

Creativity Without Conversion = 0

The ZiegenBock beer is going down smooth. Austin airport is a great place to wait for a flight. And, Ray’s Chuck Wagon at Asleep at the Wheel surely serves the finest briquette of beef in any airport. Dry and spicy. Country rock, courtesy of a SXSW (the locals say “South – By”) band helps me collect my thoughts about the day here.

This is the first time for me attending the show. And it will no doubt be the first of many. Austin is Portland meets Texas – hip, clean, smart and technology enabled with a little barbeque sauce. SXSW takes over town attracting (perhaps) hundreds of thousands to the festival.

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Bridging the Sales and Marketing Chasm with Smarketing

We market and sell in a brave new world where prospects are equipped with near x-ray vision into companies, products and people they are considering doing business with. Attention span crunch has become pandemic, and we now have the mandate of ensuring every customer engagement is targeted and relevant to synchronize buying and selling cycles – or risk being left behind to join the multitude of businesses that simply didn’t make the necessary transformations in time.

It wasn’t too long ago where the norm was for marketing and sales teams to shout insults and pass blame on for not reaching revenue goals: “The leads are worthless!”…”No, it’s the sales reps who just cannot close!!” Fast forward a decade and the rules have changed. Marketing is now measured and compensated more like sales reps on attainment of goals; and our friends in sales are having to think more marketing-like and segment and target prospects with the right messages at the right time to increase conversions. Welcome to the world of sales and marketing 2.0 or “Smarketing”!

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