Modern B2B demand generation is failing, seriously.

January 16, 2012 by 2 Comments

I never do book reviews, but it is interesting how many times I get asked: “What should I be reading about b2b marketing?”    That is why I am writing today about Adam Needles’ book: Balancing the Demand Equation – it is worth passing along to everyone.

Asterisks:

1.  Adam Needles is a friend but we have no commercial relationships with each other.

2.  Would I write a frivolous blog post supporting  friend’s work? No, not really. I really enjoyed it and decided to write about it, but am definetly a little uncomfortable because I don’t really shill. (some people may disagree, but I don’t)

Truthfully, there aren’t very many books out there for b2b marketing or b2b demand generation. I always and will continue to recommend Ardath Albee (I am an unabashed reader of all-things Albee), Jill Konrath (easy to read and fun) and Digital Body Language (not easy to read but a pre-cursor to the Adam’s book in many ways).  Basically,  I have been taking BART into work which means I get to read, and I really dug into Adam’s book.  I am writing because I like it AND I think it’s important.  Why?  It’s a study in the creating a demand generation platform. No, not just technology, but a organizational process that delivers an  always-on, highly efficient, highly effective b2b demand generation platform.

He uses a lot of data points, something that a lot of us in the blogosphere DON’T do (me included).  That helps keep me interested.  If what I am reading is just another one of us shouting about the buyer changing than I am not interested, but providing unique data points I like and this book does a good job of providing that.  There are some real-world examples – another piece lacking in a lot of the b2b marketing blogosphere’s writing (me included) is examples.  There are examples in here written from the view point of the practitioner.  I enjoyed that, and frankly, wish Adam provided more.

The quote at the top of the post is from the book and I loved it.  So there you have it, add another one to your list.

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

Filed Under: b2b Marketing, DRIP and Lead Nurturing, Uncategorized
  • JM Caballero

    Looks like great book recommendations that I need to pick up. Just want to throw my $0.02 in in a general way. I feel that when you are dealing with Demand Generation, you’re always dealing with “Design Data”. From my short experience I see there is a generational gap. The dudes that think they’re “Mad Men”, the data guys that think it’s all about the technicals, and the lay-men/woman that doesn’t know how to work a SAAS tool and gives up on it after month 3 instead of hiring someone or a vendor to assist. This does not remove the blame from the usability of all the MAPs (Silverpop, Eloqua, etc).

    Anyway, great blog, even if it’s a bit depressing (I KID)!

  • http://marketinginteractions.typepad.com Ardath Albee

    Hi Craig,

    Thanks for the LUV! Check’s in the mail :)

    But seriously, I agree with you. I thought Adams book raised a lot of points that marketers need to address. Great book! I also blogged about it here:

    http://marketinginteractions.typepad.com/marketing_interactions/2011/09/balancing-the-demand-equation.html