Josh Duncan

It was turning out to be a great year. The product I had planned and launched was hitting the market to fantastic results and the sales team was close to doubling their forecasts. Additionally, the market research that I had spearheaded had resulted in the success of two more products in our portfolio.

I thought all was going swimmingly well but that was not the case. Bonus checks arrived and despite my shaking the envelope as hard as I could, there was nothing extra to make up for the extremely light check.

While my team’s part of the portfolio had performed above average, the company had missed their financial goals for the year. There is no extra credit for almost being successful.

John...

Let me start with a little disclaimer:

I am not a gardener and I most likely will never be one. While I do visit Home Depot regularly, I spend as little time as possible in the garden section. Over the last few years, the majority of plants we have purchased for our home landscaping have met a disastrous end under the Texas sun.

This should now be history after I came across the best marketing sign I have ever seen at in the Garden Center:

(click to see full size image)

While there were lots of little signs all over the garden...

Earlier this week, I attended the Forrester Technology Marketing Executive Council in San Francisco. The purpose of this spring meeting was to discuss some innovative approaches to improve the effectiveness of marketing programs.

While many ideas were shared, the one theme that came back was the use of creative content to increase the number of sales conversations and to accelerate the buying process.

In his presentation “Organizing, Creating, And Maximizing Rich B2B Content”, Joe Chernov VP Content Marketing at Eloqua, challenged us to stop thinking as...

Trying to launch a product into a well defined marketplace is not an easy endeavor. Thanks to Microsoft, we have a perfect case study to watch.

First off, let’s put aside the fact that Microsoft has had a phone operating system for years. Instead, let’s focus on the relaunch of Windows Phone 7 to compete against the dominant mobile operating systems, RIM, iOS, and Android.

Give Microsoft credit for doing some research and at least looking for a way to differentiate in this crowded market.  They identified a great insight that most smart phones users were highly engaged with...