The catalyst was a book launch of Lithium’s chief scientist Dr. Michael Wu. The location was the Prospect Restaurant in San Francisco’s trendy south of Market. Invited was a veritable ‘whos who’ of social media bloggers and big thinkers.
Walking to dinner after flying in from Austin, TX and being up since 2am, I thought this could be a great experience or one very long night if the room was full of people talking about social marketing tactics. I was hoping for the former as I...
Driving demand that results in customers is Marketing’s primary mission. Yet Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) struggle to deliver predictable pipelines which has hurt its credibility in the Board room. Every year, they embark on a quest to solve the same riddle with programs based on what industry analysts/experts say are effective; past experience of what yielded quality results; and a dose of new ideas to try. In other words, there is a good amount of educated guessing going on.
The riddle is rooted in social media’s affect on how buyers purchase. In today’s socially engaged world, over seventy percent of the buyer’s purchase process is completed before a sales person is every contacted. The process is self-directed and leverages the transparency of markets as buyers research their problem, potential solutions and the efficacy of those solutions without needing, or wanting, to talk with a sales person. By the time the buyer...
There is a rising tide of voices about how marketing’s loss of ground in the corporation is attributable to its lack of ‘knowing the numbers’. The Madmen of Marketing are responsible for knowing what markets will buy and how to get them to buy the products their company sells. They are the strategists who lead the way to growth, tacticians that enable sales to deliver that growth, and serve as customers’ internal ombudsman. By all accounts this credibility crisis is a troubling trend when B2B marketing is more critical than sales capacity to a company’s growth these days. Yet the voices speak the truth even if they’re originating from sales, finance, support and consultants. Marketing’s silence on the topic is mistakenly being interpreted as acquiescence.
For marketing to be relevant in the board room there needs to be a direct link made between what is happening in the marketplace, marketing investments, and the resulting revenue and profit generated. The discussion that...
Tradeshows are like Scavenger hunts. You have a list of items to be found but inevitably along the way you discover something wonderful that you never imagined. At Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, I discovered a social media Angel.
The buzz around social technology is its transformational characteristics. Social media tears down barriers, boundaries and established social norms, and extends the reach well beyond the limits of email, voicemail, traditional publications and even video. Credited as the enabling force behind the Arab Spring or San Francisco’s mass transit BART protests, social media enables liked-minded individuals to self-organize. Businesses are finding that customer prefer to use social media in sharing their voice on brands, engage with employees, collaborate on best practices, and share their opinions.
The limitation of social media is text.
According to David Rennyson, “Social networks are a very anti-social place because it is all...
The need for change is in the air; it comes up in every conversation. Marc Benioff, Salesforce’sChairman and CEO passionately espoused change at Dreamforce. His call to the world was that companies need to change or be left behind. He went one step further and gave a dire warning to CEOs – change thyself or fall from grace.
His rallying cry was for enterprises to start their own business “Arab Spring”...
Last week’s Dreamforce conference was one of those ‘must be there’ events. Boasting a recording breaking audience, it was a who’s who of speakers, celebrities, attendees, and exhibitors. The thrill of seeing MC Hammer and Will.i.am up close and personal was only trumpeted by Neil Diamond’s live interview about how his new company is using Saleforce.com’s software to bring innovative new music products to market.
The Cloud Expo exhibit floor housed over 375 exhibitors ranging from innovative start-ups like Optify to behemoths like Accenture and IBM. With an attendee to exhibitor ratio of 120 to 1, exhibitors varied in their creativity to get you to stop and hear their pitch. IBM offered sparkly balls and nifty...
The market’s response to the S&P downgrade of American debt was panic. The ‘Great American Downgrade’ is what I’m hearing it being referred to. While the pundits argue over whether it was a ‘crash’ or a ‘correction’, the Senate, ironically, debates opening an investigation into S&P’s “irresponsible” act. The looming question of whether this will trigger a double dip recession depends on how we look at the future.
A glass can be either half full or half empty; it all depends on your perspective. In the frenetic world of 7×24 news, social media, always-connected jobs and maxi-multi-tasking lives we often lose perspective. It is as if we’re racing through a forest as fast as we can, seeing only the blur of the trees and believing we’re on the right trail.
Our economic situation is a sum total of all the activities and perspectives of businesses, citizens, investors, and governments. What plagues our economy is the same thing that hampers growth in our...
Like most people, I have one eye on the debt ceiling and unemployment debate. Sorting reality from spin and the juvenile drama reminds me of decades ago university student government meetings. It’s also reminiscent of some management team meetings where one spends enormous energy sorting the facts from all the hooey.
What strikes me as troublesome is the colossal disconnect between the perspectives of government, companies and the general public. Their focus is telling of the disconnect: The next election cycle, next financial earnings report, and when the next set of bills are due. The lack of common ground or shared goals between these three perspectives is undermining our future.
Admittedly I’m not an economist, and am wise enough to not play one on TV, but nowhere in all these discussions is an acknowledgement that the collective “we” are in new territory. Old rules don’t apply – this is not Paul Volker’s 1980s crisis nor is it like post-Great Recession. ...
Fournaise, a marketing consulting firm, recently completed a study that found that marketers and CEOs have a big disconnect. I don’t disagree there is a disconnect but it is disconcerting that a study of 600 companies finds marketing has such a widespread lack of credibility.
I could dissect the study’s approach and find flaws with the methodology or with how the results were interpreted. Or point out that the study headlines have been sensationalized and are rather self-serving given what Fournaise does.
But attacking the credibility of the study does not remove the gnawing feeling that there is truth in the headline. The short tenure of CMOs, the persistent lack of sales and marketing alignment, widespread disappointment in marketing’s poor revenue productivity, and the ubiquitous head scratching about what exactly is marketing’s role supports the claim that there is a disconnect between the CEO and marketing. What I don’t buy is that this is all marketing’s...
The economy is working on rebounding and companies are gearing up. Pipelines and revenues are heading north and hiring along with it. But something in this rebound is different.
For new sales hires, the expectation is that they join with a solid book of business and a pipeline already in hand; even for companies where the ramp time for sales people to achieve repeatable revenue productivity is six to nine months. Same goes for marketers. Regardless of the market’s or company’s maturity or readiness the expectation of newly hired marketing leaders is that they produce a significant uptick in pipelines in 60 to 90 days, regardless of the capabilities or competence of marketing or sales. For many new hires, these are unrealistic and unachievable expectations. Nevertheless, the message is loud and clear – growth comes only from net new customer acquisition.
Have CEOs finally ‘had enough’ of sales and marketing mis-alignment? Or has the uncertainty of the rebound...
