SalesPortal has been selected as a finalist for Red Herring’s 2012 Top 100 Global Award, a prestigious recognition honoring the year’s most audacious and far-reaching private technology companies and entrepreneurs from across the globe.

The Red Herring editorial team selected the companies demonstrating the most innovative technologies and business models from more than 1000 companies from more than 40 nations. These companies, representing past Red Herring Asia, Europe and North America award winners, are judged on a range of qualitative and quantitative metrics, including technology innovation, financial performance, growth criterion, management’s execution standards, potential globalization of the strategy and market share improvement.

“Technology companies are becoming the bright spot in the economic outlook based on their increasing role within macro-economic environments,” stated Alex Vieux, chairman of Red Herring. “2012 has confirmed the sector’s vibrant activity and its resilience to widespread economic problems. An unprecedented number of entrepreneurs are attempting to jump ahead of the competition and aspire to make a difference. Breakthroughs obsolete each other faster than ever before. SalesPortal has performed exceptionally in its field and strongly deserves to be singled out as one of the Red Herring Global Finalists. At this stage, we are left with the daunting task to select the best qualified companies for the 2012 Top 100 Global Award.”

“After winning the North America award, we are honored to have made it to the next level,” said Saurabh Khetrapal, co-founder and CEO of SalesPortal. “This award is significant for SalesPortal in that we’ve gone global this year with our expansion into India with a new network. Our technology is changing how new and valuable marketing partnerships are created.”

Global 100 winners will be announced after finalists’ presentations during the Red Herring Global Forum in Los Angeles, Nov. 27-29, 2012.

SalesPortal today announced a new capability that provides enterprises with the flexibility to rank their marketing partners to provide priority access to their customer audiences.

The new capability allows users to rank partners by setting the specific number of times an offer is read by call center agents for a priority partner campaign before moving to the next priority partner.

With the partner ranking capability, users have the option to override pre-set algorithms by configuring campaigns to prioritize and rank specific partners over others. Users might choose to override the algorithms for several reasons: to favor established partnerships, support existing exclusivity agreements, align with specific brands or align with current co-marketing / advertising investments with specific partners.

“The partner ranking capability is another example of our responsiveness to the marketplace,” said Sujay Rao, SalesPortal’s vice president of product management. “This ability to favor established partners in the call transfer and routing decisions is important to our large enterprise customers. It allows for better control and configurability to prioritize higher value partners within the context of our automated algorithm-driven model.”

Prior to the introduction of the partner ranking capability, SalesPortal automatically determined which partner would receive call transfers based on a number of algorithm-driven factors such as product relevancy, hours of operation and the cost-per-lead bid by a partner, among others.

This latest SalesPortal capability is available within 30 days to current and new customers using the cloud-based, patented technology.

Here are some of the blog posts for marketers and contact center executives that we’ve recently found interesting. Hopefully you’ll get something out of them too!

For Marketers

Five Surefire Ways to Fail at B2B Customer Acquisition

In an era of hyper-connectivity, our biggest failure as B2B marketers very well could be our ignorance of how connected the world has become.

Who is Responsible for “Challenger” Lead Generation?

Dixon and Toman write, “Put differently, the average rep fills orders by reacting to existing demand; stars sell where customers learn (not just where they buy), shaping demand and teaching customers into the sales funnel. The best sales reps, it turns out, are just as good at marketing as they are at selling.”

Making Assumptions About The Buyer’s Journey

If the cycle takes 9 months, that’s a lot of gray area for each stage. And all stages are not created equally in length of time or objectives that must be met for the continuation of forward motion. Plus, it occurs to me that the construct above is for us more than it is representative of our buyers.

Value Propositions Produce Instant Relevance

Relevance Marketing and Selling point to the fact that any sales or marketing message must be expressed so prospects see themselves solving their problems, reaching their goals and objectives, and enjoying the success that comes from doing so.

Do You Really Understand Your Lead Gen Sales Activity Funnel?

Do you really understand the how and the why behind what your outbound lead generation team should be doing on daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis?

For Contact Center Managers

Employee Performance Gaps: How to Identify Gaps in Call Center Agent Performance

There are three steps to iden­ti­fy­ing per­for­mance gaps in call cen­ter agents:

1. Cre­ate a bullet-proof mon­i­tor­ing form
2. Develop a com­pan­ion Call Qual­ity Guide
3. Hold fre­quent cal­i­bra­tion sessions.

Building a successful business requires customer loyalty

Loyalty comes with a number of perks, therefore pleasing everyone we can with a “wow” experience attracts more and more business.

If you want better customers, provide better service.

Does a customer owe a tip for “good” service at a full-service restaurant in the United States? Yes. Should a supermarket customer always have to return her shopping cart to a designated cart corral? No. Perhaps she has a crying baby in the backseat or it’s starting to rain. Her only obligation is to pay for her groceries.

A Contact Center Must Follow Basic Customer Support Principles

The following principles sound like they would apply to telemarketing. But in reality, you will need to apply them to all channels if you want your agents to provide quality service and maintain (if not improve) retention.