This week: The food is getting sexy in this week’s Sales Lead Digest. We have stories of onions, mac and cheese, and I bet we could have found a few more if we looked! To balance we found some animal stories. We’re getting soft in our old age. Enjoy!

This week we’re thinking about the future. From Google’s evangelist telling us all marketing will be automated in 5 years to McKinsey showing the real-time consumer shift in what they expect from software. In addition to those two articles, we look at a deal gone bad (a very big deal) and what we’d do with a candy factory. It’s all here for you in the best of lead generation related articles this week. Enjoy!

Marketing is the lifeblood of your business. Making the decision to outsource this critical task, therefore, is not something to be taken lightly. One question many small and mid-sized business owners grapple with is whether to go with a freelancer or hire a digital agency.

This week feels like it’s going to the dogs. 53 dogs to be exact. We talk about leading with the big objection in an engagement story and we investigate the idea of a new role designed specifically for getting sales and marketing to talk. But that’s not all. We also take a look at wind power bird deaths and testing hypotheses. To end, we get to work on our “smize” behind our masks, because first impressions still count. All in all, a good bunch of sales and marketing stories. Enjoy!

This week we’re reading about the changes in customers and how one company is dealing with it. We’re digging into the history of the office because, hey, how did we end up here? We’re thinking about our responsibility as marketers and sellers to find the right fit for our products, and we’re learning more about what happens when we exercise.