I have been writing the Funnelholic for a couple years and it’s been a real labor of love. The goal for this post was to find the top ten posts of all time.  My first step was to re-read every Funnelholic post this Saturday morning. The second step was to narrow it down to ten.  There were a ton of posts I liked which made this exercise fun but difficult. There is no formula here; I started with some rules and then abandoned them for decisions made from the “gut.”

Here are the ten  I ended up choosing (not listed in order):

1. The Martin Scorcese post: I had a lot of fun writing  this one and thought it was pretty creative. How can this post not be on here?

2.  The Rounders/Competitive Internet post: Yes, this one’s another movie metaphor post. For one, I loved Rounders and two, I love the Competitive Internet subculture.  My guy Brian Provost likes to build mystique around the art of winning on the Internet and also makes sure that I know that I have no idea what the real hitters in this game are doing.

3. The “Why Billy Beane Has Never Won the World Series” post: Creative, interesting, provocative… I love it. I love the title, too.

4. The “Lead Gen Metrics that Matter” post: Note: My opinions on which lead gen metrics marketers should leverage has evolved.  This was my first shot on this topic so it’s a sentimental favorite.  Marketers love and need to talk about metrics, but they have no idea which ones to choose.  I had  a number of people mention this post to me at trade shows, etc., so it made the list.  For more on metrics, check out this on-demand Webinar I did with Sirius Decision’s Megan Heuer.

5. The “Why You Need to Beat the Buyer to the RFP” post: When you’re limited to only positioning yourself after the RFP is created, you are often coming from behind.  Being positioned before the RFP and before the project is defined is often the key to winning deals and should be a big consideration when creating lead and sales-stage definitions. Why did I include this post? Because I see rising misuse of strict BANT criteria; that is, “We only work on leads that are decision makers with a three-month long, budgeted project”.  The marketer who agrees to only find these types of leads is screwed (pardon the French) and the sales team that is only asking for these is going to miss their numbers and blame marketing as a result. In other words, no one wins.

6.  My first Twitter post: Everyone else talks about it, so why can’t I? Twitter and social media are so over-played but there is still no coherent strategy for success on the B2B side and a whole lot of confusion about what this all means.  I don’t proclaim to have the answers, but I certainly can write about it.

7. Jon Miller’s Thought Leadership interview: I thought long and hard about choosing one of the thought leadership posts for political reasons.  Since they made up the bulk of my last couple of month’s posts, I had to do it.  So I chose the one with the most visitors to it.  This interview did really well for The Funnelholic. At the time of this post’s release, I wasn’t as proficient at driving traffic via tools like Twitter, so the success must be Jon’s ability to drive traffic. Jon is one of the smartest guys in the biz and his interview is great, so I feel good about this choice.

8. The Yelp in B2B post: Lots of B2B vendors aren’t getting still:  Buyers want and have access to information from their peers and third party resources, not “sales collateral.”  Write that down.

9. The post on why marketers should “shadow” sales once in awhile:  I had a best friend growing up who ended up working as a consultant for the CIA/NSA. He went to Iraq for some fact-finding during the heart of the war and came back a changed man.  He went there thinking he was an expert and came back realizing he don’t know sh&#*t.  The same thing applies here: marketers need to sit on the front lines once in awhile if they really want to help their customer, the sales team.  I had a real-world example just the other day; I sat in a sales call and came back realizing we needed to change the power point and the messaging.

10.  The Marc Andreesen hiring success post: This post really put things in perspective for me as a hirer and helped me think about the people I work with in the right way.  It’s not about lead gen, but that’s never stopped me before. This blog post is near and dear to my heart.

Craig Rosenberg is the Funnelholic. He loves sales, marketing, and things that drive revenue. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter