For all of us involved in selling to B2B (particularly manufacturing) prospects, answering the question – What is a lead?
The short answer is one of two definitions “a new potential relationship” or “a reason to check in with an existing relationship.” You are fortunate if 10% of the leads you identify are “ready to buy” or what many in sales term “sales ready” – ready for a quote for at least what they believe they […]
This is probably the one thing that every CEO wants to know about marketing – what are the best key metrics to use for making marketing investment decisions and then to evaluate those marketing investments. I deliberately did not make this my #1 because the previous posts cover elements that, if not addressed, will greatly influence these key metrics. Now that I have covered those, let’s dive into the key metrics […]
We have arrived at the #5 thing I believe every CEO should know about marketing. In case you are new to the series, you can find #1 – #4 (The “Ante”, Not all marketing is the same, B2B buyer journey, and B2B website purpose) in our blog.
#5 is about alignment – specifically marketing and sales alignment around one specific definition. There are certainly many […]
As websites have evolved, I am still surprised to find many B2B websites are basically all about the company and what they do or what […]
This third blog post of the “7 things a CEO needs to know about marketing” series focuses on the B2B buyer journey. You may believe your company sells stuff to the market – like your products or services, however, that is your seller view and not a buyer view. You indeed have products and services, and you definitely engage in activities that lead to sales but the truth is people are buying what they need […]
Many CEOs tell me about marketing companies that call or email them to sell automated nurture, or paid search, or SEO, or other services that they assure the CEO is what works. There are certainly some marketing tactics that one might consider fundamental to many business operations but the real truth is, and the #2 in my series of 7 things every CEO should know about marketing, tactics that work for […]
The Marketing Ante
What do you, as a CEO, need to know about marketing? If you have a marketing professional in a leadership role on your team, you might initially think you don’t need to know that much. Of course, how do you know if they are doing a good job? If you are a CEO that has part-time marketing staff, or maybe just tactical marketing […]
The goal of any B2B lead generation program is to ultimately generate as many actionable leads as possible for the sales team. There are certainly plenty of topics around an approach, but the one area I want to focus on now is the absolute commitments that marketing and sales must make to each other to create an environment that will produce success.
At the heart of any B2B lead generation program must be an ongoing cycle […]
One very obvious phenomenon during the COVID-19 crisis has been the great increase in online live and recorded webinars and full-on virtual events (multi-session events). We have been directly involved in increasing the use of both and both creating and project managing these events. Here are some best practices for today’s virtual events to keep in mind:
Develop guidelines for the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)
Some SMEs have done webinars, and some have not, but we’ve learned […]
Do stay-at-home B2B salespeople perform differently?
This week I had an interesting conversation with one of my clients. He manages a B2B sales team and pointed out an interesting statistic that has emerged regarding how his sales team is performing during this “stay-at-home” period. Basically, his sales team has improved by 70% in terms of the average time for first follow-up on leads. In other words, while his […]