The page had hardly turned on 2018 when I saw the headline . . . “Why You Need to Align Your Marketing and Sales Team for 2019.” Another year, another article for why it is important for organizations to align their marketing and sales teams – as if organizations do […]
Rick
13 posts
Marketing can take you on a long hike. The one thing I can guarantee you about the journey is that getting more leads are not better if you don’t know how to nurture. The goal of lead nurturing is to help potential customers on their buying journey. It’s not just […]
How can marketers better connect with people we hope will become our customers? Over the past year, I’ve been researching why there’s such a disconnect between marketing and customers so I can understand how to bridge that gap. Why? Because right now, the trust gap between marketers and customers has […]
Who should own B2B lead generation: sales, marketing or both? You might be thinking, “isn’t the answer obvious?” It’s not. Let me explain. I hear the same problem over and over. Sales and marketing aren’t doing a great job of executing Lead Generation because they both believe it’s the others […]
Lead nurturing is one of those things that’s easy to talk about but hard to do. In this article, I’ll share how to apply lead nurturing to help advance leads through three stages of your lead generation funnel to get more qualified opportunities. Here’s the thing: Our customer’s don’t see […]
No one will ever say “we don’t focus on the customer.” Here’s why (even empathetic) marketers fail at customer empathy and how to fix it. Let me explain: Dr. Johannes Huttula did research with 480 experienced marketing managers. They asked marketers to step into their customer’s shoes and predict what they would […]
We need to stop treating our customers like objects with our marketing and treat them like people. Be human first by recognizing their humanity. So how do you humanize marketing? Let me explain. I don’t know about you, but I’ve become weary of all the “personalized” emails that I’m receiving lately. It’s […]
Traditional sales and marketing methods have failed to keep pace with the way modern B2B buyers purchase goods and services. Meetings, phone calls, and email are still important B2B channels but how can you have immediate conversations? Conversational Marketing is about having direct one-to-one conversations to connect with customers and […]
In most B2B companies with complex products or services, marketing-sourced leads rarely account for even half the revenue and often it is much less. To keep valuable field sales resources productive, many of the more innovative sales and marketing departments build “sales development” teams. Oracle. Marketo. HubSpot. HP. Salesforce.com. Just […]
Last week, Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs released their annual B2B Content Marketing Study that dives into the practices and habits of B2B content marketers in North America. Content marketing is a key component of any customer experience strategy and while the overwhelming majority of B2B organizations are producing content, the study shows that successful execution […]