I am already reading articles proclaiming the death of social media. No, seriously I really am! OK, so once we have got over the attention-grabbing headline, we can start to look at what the author is actually trying to tell us. It seems that figures for Facebook usage (in certain countries) amongst teenagers has levelled off, if not actually dropped. The dramatists can look at this figure in any number of ways and read different reasons into it such as:

• Teenagers don’t want to be on the same platform as their parents.
   
• They would rather be active on a variety of different apps and

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When the water of a river stops moving it stagnates and not only will a foul smell start to rise from the murky depths but its life and soul will die off. Just like a river, your sales funnel needs to keep flowing. It won’t suffice if you just pump your CRM software full of leads as this data will remain lifeless if nothing is done with it eventually clogging up your system with redundant records.

Once the leads are in place, one of the first steps is to qualify and segment them. Some leads might be easy wins and can be fished straight out and into your prospects and opportunities. Others

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Traditionally the close of a sale might have been seen as the end of the sales journey; today it is often seen as one of the very early stages of the journey if not quite the beginning. Parallel to this shift in the typical customer relationship, sales marketing orientation techniques have been replaced by various models over the past decades and for many of you, relationship marketing is where you are right now.

I’m sure lots of you subscribe to the theory that the cost of customer retention is considerably cheaper than the cost of acquisition. Following the various steps on the lead

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Consumers are more empowered than ever before. Whether sat curled up on the couch with a tablet on their lap, stood waiting for a bus with a smartphone in their hand or on a rail journey with the laptop plugged in, people are online all the time. They can find the best deals, the newest offers, the latest trends there and then. How on earth are you and your business meant to keep up?

Well each touch point with a customer will tell you something about them. The method of communication used – a customer may have completed a webform, visited a website, clicked through from an email, sent a

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It doesn’t matter how good your sense of direction is, to get from A to B you are going to need some kind of guidance. Whether it’s your inherent sense of knowing where to go if you are familiar with the roads, looking up and plotting a route, or switching on the satnav and getting guided all the way navigation is something we all need to do.

Additionally some places are easier to get around than others – a beautiful old city such as York or Paris is a joy to walk around, but driving is quite a different experience! On the other hand US cities with their grid system are designed to

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