As a chief marketing officer (CMO) or senior B2B marketing professional, there are few things as satisfying as earning and maintaining the trust of your CEO, and for that matter, the rest of the executive team. Conversely, if you do not have this trust, your professional life can be quite painful. In my career, I’ve […]
I talk about the concept of stopping “revenue leakage” a lot, and one of the biggest causes of revenue leakage is when sales or marketing reps fail to follow-up (FTFU). You spend a lot of time and money to generate inquiries and then see the effort wasted. Not only is this bad sales and marketing […]
I’ve long observed that B2B marketers focus too much on lead generation, and not enough on current customer expansion and retention, which is, after all, where the bulk of profits lie. When asked, the typical B2B marketer will say that 80 to 85 percent of their effort goes to customer acquisition. This is a mistake. […]
Okay. I get that the title of this article is a little ambitious. However, there are things B2B marketers can do to achieve better alignment with their sales counterparts – leading to not only better results for the company, but also to better professional and personal relationships. It is all about achieving alignment, in terms […]
I was attending a fitness class at my health club this past weekend and the instructor was talking about how full the club was in early January and how many of the people were “New Year’s resolution” exercisers who would probably be absent within a month. He said that many people have noble intentions and […]
B2B Marketing is a tricky business with a lot of moving parts. To do it right, you need the answers to the appropriate questions. Here are five to get you started: Is what you offer a commodity or a differentiated product or service? This is a critical question because it will determine how you must […]
Napoleon once remarked, “A general should consider himself successful if half of what he plans comes to pass.” This is not to say that you shouldn’t carefully plan. But the fact is that things don’t always turn out the way you plan (just ask Napoleon about a place called Waterloo). For example, the list is […]
One of the worst ways to spend your day as a B2B marketer is to “major in the minors.” By this, I mean spending your time on activities that have little or no impact on results. As I write this, it is snowy in Colorado. There are three trucks in our company’s parking lot, scraping […]
Last week, I talked about the first five winning habits you can adopt for more B2B marketing success in 2011. You can find that article here. Following are habits 6-10. Habit 6: Work your social media plan. This is the year to really make social media work for your organization. If you haven’t already started […]
It’s been a while since I have neglected to end a year without doing some type of planning and goal setting for my business (or whatever company I was working for at the time) and my personal life. Like the saying goes, it’s hard to hit a target you don’t have, and goal setting is […]