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Archive for October, 2008

Hiring your next Marketing leader

Published October 30, 2008 CMO recruiting Leave a Comment

In my last post, I explained why Marketing trumps Sales today — why your CMO is a more important hire than your new VP of Sales. In this post, Mr. CEO, I’m going to help you hire your new CMO.

In order to look for a CMO, we first have to define Marketing.

What is the purpose of marketing? Is it to promote the brand, as a marketing person at a large software company said? No it is not, Mr. CEO. The purpose of Marketing is this:

To help Sales sell.

In this noisy, complex world where products are commoditized every day, we need a CMO that can distill our offering down to its very essence, figure out the business outcomes that result, map a buying process, and design multi-modal campaigns that not only get interest, but build relationships based on trust.

We also need our new CMO to truly understand customers, so he or she needs to spend a lot of time on the road visiting customers. In addition, customer-facing groups like sales and support need a lot of face time.

He or she will have to develop a lead generation blueprint. I recommend you speak with Bulldog Solutions and leverage their expertise.

He or she will have to craft strong value propositions. Please speak with Jill Konrath of Selling to Big Companies, who is one of the foremost experts on value propositions.

Lastly, does your new CMO really understand sales? I believe sales experience is a prerequisite for marketing leadership today.

For companies looking for best practices in b2b lead generation who wish to improve the way they acquire new customers, Find New Customers is the place to go. CSO Insights says companies need to improve the way they generate leads and implement processes for business to business lead generation.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor, is a demand generation expert and sales leader, as well as the President of Find New Customers, a lead generation company, who helps businesses create lead generation campaigns and continually publishes the best lead generation ideas, so his readers can determine the best lead generation strategy to find new customers. He can be reached at (516) 284-4930 or mailto:jogden@findnewcustomers.net.

Does Lead Generation really work?

Published October 26, 2008 Demand Generation , Marketing , marketing sales Leave a Comment

Brian Carroll, expert and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, talks about the need for the “patient nurturing of prospects.” But does that really work?

I joined a UK-based firm in the Search Marketing business as VP of Sales and Marketing. After several weeks of assessment, I found a high quality firm who was very much product/technology centric. There was zero marketing and a real lack of educational content.

Unfortunately, I found this ship very hard to turn. Their success in the UK blinded them to the need for change. But I persisted and slowly, over time, they began to come around.

They invested in marketing software and an new CRM — then they embarked in a series of very professionally done webinars. To their credit, they did a bang-up job.

It started slowly — as Brian Carroll said it would. As the first webinar was planned, the CEO (my boss) was very worried about attendance — but to his credit he remained committed. But as they kept up the educational push, attendance grew and grew. Quality content was put on their website and salespeople fully utilized it. After about nine months of this, they issued a press release — Deloitte named them the 14th fastest growing company in the UK. Their CEO, Warren Cowan, said that 2008 is by far their best year.

Mr. CEO, you can do this too. Focus on education and gentle, patient nuturing. It works!

Why Marketing trumps Sales today

Published October 24, 2008 marketing sales Leave a Comment

Life used to be so simple.

Hire a bunch of salespeople, buy a CRM, train them on a process like Solution Selling and turn them loose. These salespeople use their Rolodex, dial the phone, set appointments, uncover pains, develop proposals and close deals. What to grow sales? Just rinse and repeat.

Sorry, Mr. CEO, but those days are long gone. Prospects are busier than ever. They screen calls with voice-mail. Email boxes are overloaded. Decisions are made by committee. Besides, when they want to research an issue or problem, they have Google. No need to talk to a salesperson.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King. In this new world, Marketing is king — not Sales. Marketing is the group that initiates conversations and builds relationships. Only marketing can cut through the clutter and build relationships — particularly across an organization.

In future posts, we’ll look closely at how Marketing can do its job better, but in this post, let’s just put the emphasis where it belongs — on Marketing. The CMO position might be your most important hire.