The Funnelholic

Wow, I had no idea how many personal “thank yous” I would get on my last post on Adam Needles book.  It just proves that b2b marketing is hard to learn and people are craving recommendations.  So, people asked me for a couple more recommendations.  We just moved to a new office, so I pulled out my box of books here at work.  There are probably more in my home shelf so anticipate another “5 more books for the aspiring Funnelholic” post in a couple weeks. I am both a sales and marketing guy, so the books cross both boundaries AND I believe sales and marketing should read them all (remember sales and marketing alignment!).  Here I go:

1. Content Rules by Ann Handley and CC Chapman — Great stuff and written in fun, engaging way.  I honestly didn’t think I would like it, but ended up REALLY liking it.  Content marketing is “the joint” right now, and this book helps understand it and provide tangible actions to take right now.

2.  Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy — It was my first book and I have kept it close by.  He was one of the original masters and there is so much to learn in there. Another fun read that takes you one day at the beach to get through.

3.  Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore — It is cliche to even include it on my list, but I had to.  If you are in b2b technology — you have to read it. Period.

4.  Sales Mastery A Novel by Barry Trailer — Ready for this: First interview out of college, I find a dude who was in my fraternity who was a VP at Oracle.  I go in to see him.  10 minutes in he says: “Ok, get a better suit because what you have on is terrible and read this book”.  He handed me Sales Mastery.  The book is cool because it is a fictional story with important points about complex selling. My first sales book!! Count it!

5.  The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino — It was a recommendation from my buddy Lars Nilsson.  I bought it, looked at the ancient storyline and put it on my shelf for 10 years.  I just read it and now I get it.  Inspiring and important is how I would describe it -read it.

Note: I have no commercial relationship with these people.

I now start every blog post with “it’s been awhile”. I apologize to anyone who cares, but I had twins (yeah!), and I have been slammed with work at Focus.com. I was inspired to write by my co-worker Lauren Harper’s awesome post on community management — massive props to Lauren. Also, I have been back in the trenches so I am back to picking up real world tips and best practices that work or don’t work. I have been jotting down my ideas and have been waiting to blog on each individual point, but I am just going to bundle them up once in awhile instead.

Tips are below:

Use account-based marketing when selling and marketing expensive, enterprise class products – I participated in a roundtable with Lauren Goldstein, Lisa Horner, and Ardath Albee on b2b demand generation,  you can listen to the roundtable here.  There were a lot of great tips to the event, but here is one I locked in on:  For enterprise class demand generation, ie. demand generation focused on big ticket, 6-7 figure sales, Lauren suggested creating content campaigns tailored specifically for each individual accounts. If you are going to make a million bucks on the client, isn’t it worth it? We talk a lot about relevancy and how that rises you above the noise.  Well, tailoring your content for that big whale client is a prime example of uber-relevancy and I think an absolutely great idea.

To read about account-based marketing directly from Lauren, click here
For an example, read this about what her team did with Nuance

Be specific in your content – one thing the content explosion has created has been a lot of writing and talking about concept(s).  These  concepts are re-hashed over and over. In the marketing blogosphere EVERYONE is saying the same thing.  Does this sound familiar:  “The buyer has changed, they don’t come to you…lodi dodi, we like to party”.  Don’t get my wrong, I understand the change in buying behavior but a lot of us just want to get on with it and go tear it up.  So here is the deal: The way you create compelling content is today’s chaotic world of “blowhard-ism” is to offer up real-world, specific examples of how ideas are being executed. Here are some simple rules that I am trying to apply to my content:

1. Produce tangible, “ready to use” tips and best practices in your content (blog posts, white papers, webinars).  Example: see above

2. Back up your tips and best practices with real applications and examples. Example: see below

Here is an example of a blog post that has real tips and real data to back it up:  Jon Miller’s My Secret Methods for Turning Marketing Leads into Qualified Sales Leads. It is a valuable guide with real-world examples.  The examples are not just for credibility but help the reader visualize and understand what they need to go do.

Hope you enjoy.

July 25 through July 29 is Social Business week on Focus.com. If you’ve read my blog, you know that I’m a fan of the Social CRM movement, but I am not an expert - so I’m leaving that to the pros. I am sticking to my expertise, hosting a couple of events about social and sales and marketing. I am hosting a webinar with the master of content/inbound/social media marketing, Mike Volpe, on Friday, July 29, at 1 pm PT. Before that, I am hosting a social selling roundtable at 11 am PT with Nigel Edelshain, Miles Austin and Koka Sexton. It’s fun trading ideas for using social for a lot of things. Sales is definitely a favorite of mine.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from folks is not having enough time for social endeavors. I usually tell people I wouldn’t recommend it if it’s a time-suck. So I’ve compiled a list of easy things that salespeople can do, none of which seems too scary or daunting - and it can all be done right away. Let me know what you would add to the following list. Continue Reading »

I am currently trying to buy a couple pieces of technology (true story). I won’t tell you what kind of technology (to protect the innocent). But I will tell you that I am learning how much it sucks to be a b2b buyer. I wrote a little about my experiences and recommendations on the Savvy b2b marketing blog.

It’s really eye-opening to go through the process of trying to buy something in a comparable industry. As I live through my pain, I will chronicle our experiences. (I am including my partner-in-crime Lori Janjigian as she helps me in the buying process and is supplying me with her observations, aka complaints, about the process.)

Continue Reading »