In this B2B Lead blog, read how Motorola used Facebook as a platform for generated engagement. Learn how the team developed a Motorola Solutions Facebook business page, and how it is used to start conversations with its audience.
Continue readingLearn how to build and distributes thought-provoking content with a case study of a firm that created a multi-million dollar pipeline of pending deals every year. How? Via controversial content. Read on.
Continue readingAccording to a MarketingWeek article, 70% of CEOs have lost trust in marketers. However, CEOs have just woken up to a new trend in marketing: aligning key performance indicators (KPIs) with clear marketing objectives. This disappointment is merely a snapshot of what is happening right now. Read on to learn how marketers are making it a goal to improve acting on data to boost performance.
Continue readingFor a complex sale, CRM technology can make the difference between a customer moving up through the marketing-sales funnel to completely falling out. Many companies use more than one vendor for their CRM needs, as sometimes Marketing and Sales can require different specific needs. See how marketing automation technologies may offer some companies another option if they are working with multiple CRM software pieces.
Continue readingI look at the challenge that marketers often face when it comes to getting their budgets approved by finance and I wonder why does it have to be so hard? Many financial executives still view marketing as an expense, a.k.a. cost center, rather than viewing it as an asset that creates revenue. What’s the bottom […]
Continue readingThe precursor of change is always pain. For most of us over the past four years, our marketplace has inflicted varying levels of it as we have slogged through the most challenging economic climate since the Great Depression. This is apparently not enough to make marketers and sales professionals embrace change and develop a formal […]
Continue readingResearch into the needs of your prospects can provide your sales team with an immediate advantage. Here are 4 steps that you can take to give you’re the right information before your next sales call.
Continue readingWhat’s a marketer to do when leadership dismisses marketing and insists that a superior product will sell itself? Follow the lead of Jeremy Scully and take a high-stakes gamble: Put your reputation on the line to prove marketing’s value. Scully, the Business Development Manager for Planisware, a leading provider of project and portfolio management solutions, […]
Continue readingDo you feel you have the full support of your CEO for your marketing plan? I caught up with with a colleague who coaches marketers. He has a lot of experience to offer but he often feels like his hands are tied. He voiced his frustration to me: “Nearly everyone I talked to say they […]
Continue readingI can’t stress this enough: when it comes to marketing, if we’re not constantly learning, we’re going to find ourselves left behind faster than ever. Some people say I’m an expert in B2B lead generation because I wrote a book on it, but you know what? I am astonished by what I didn’t know then […]
Continue readingAt the B2B Summit 2011 in San Francisco, Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content at MECLABS, asked me and a few other attendees to reveal our most important “aha” moments in 2011. Our responses are compiled in the video below; hearing what my colleagues had to say produced even more “aha” moments for me, and I’m […]
Continue readingI just got back from this year’s round of MarketingSherpa B2B Summits in Boston and San Francisco, where I provided one-on-one coaching to attendees, marketers from Fortune 500 organizations, leading private companies, and emerging businesses. (You can read more about who attended here.) Frankly, I don’t know who walks away more enlightened – the marketers […]
Continue readingFor most of us, the phrase “demand generation” conjures up things like campaigns, trade shows, and the corporate website. But what about sales prospecting? Despite all the newfangled marketing automation tools, most CEOs increase the funding for demand generation by authorizing the expansion of the sales organization. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Books like SNAP Selling, […]
Continue readingThe days of marketing campaigns are over. Today, for marketing to effectively drive revenue, it must be a continuous, meaningful conversation. The most successful marketers will know how to lead that conversation both internally and externally so they can communicate to their customer the right things in the right way at the right time.
Continue readingWhen members of the B2B Lead Generation Roundtable on LinkedIn were asked how companies can improve alignment between sales and marketing, the debate heated up quickly.
Continue readingIf it’s almost unheard of for your sales team to make a cold call thanks to a sales pipeline bursting with steaming-hot leads generated by your marketing department, skip this post. If it isn’t, I strongly encourage you to read the following article, which initially appeared on the MarketingExperiments Blog. It’s written by Dave Green, […]
Continue readingIf you lead a team of marketers, you likely have a creative bunch. People who, ideally, have a lot of passion about what they do – the key ingredient for successful social media and content marketing. But that natural passion can easily get buried under layers of indiscernible corporate fiat. So how do you help […]
Continue readingDemonstrating your expertise gives you an edge to combat commoditization by attracting more business and proactively building your reputation. This is especially important in generating positive word of mouth (WOM) too. As an expert, people and companies will seek you out when they have problems. You’ll evolve from a vendor that is simply selling products […]
Continue readingTrevor Cook and David Murray skewer the term “thought leadership” on their own blogs. I agree with their arguments to a point. Yes – people abuse the term “thought leader” and it can be contrived and meaningless. That being said, I disagree entirely with the definition of thought leadership as presented. First of all, thought […]
Continue readingYesterday, I met with the CEO, CMO and CSO at a top 500 software company. It was clear that each executive had a completely different vision of lead generation and how to measure marketing peformance. This leads to a problem that affects 87% of B2B marketers. CMOs are being pressured to prove themselves when their […]
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