cadenceblog

The 800-CEO-READ Mystery Box for charity

Just a quick post to let you know about a fun offer from 800ceoread. For $20 (free shipping), you get three business books that were submitted for their Business Book Awards.  In this box you are guaranteed one title that either won, or made the shortlist for best book of 2007 in its category, and 2 other titles that were submitted for the awards.

The $20 will go directly towards Room to Read. You may have heard about this non-profit before - the founder John Wood, was a previous executive at Microsoft. There is an interesting story behind how he left the corporate world to start this non-profit which you can read more about here.  He also wrote a memoir in 2006 called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.

I have more than enough books on my reading list but I thought the mystery part was fun, and since it was going to charity, I couldn't pass it up. And I wanted to pass it on...

For more information visit 800-CEO-READ Mystery Box for charity!

What is a meatball sundae?

I attended a webcast called How Do You Avoid the Meatball Sundae presented by  Seth Godin (sponsored by ClickZ Network and BuzzLogic). I try to catch  Seth Godin whenever I can, because he is such a great story teller, totally inspirational, and I always learn something new (like a tool called  Jott)!

Seth was talking about his new book Meatball Sundae.  He started off by saying that he was vegetarian so the idea of a meatball sundae is especially repulsive, but the image being repulsive to everyone was the point. The meatball represented how companies operated in the past (and still do), by creating average products for average people. He is referring to factories, mass production of products, where efficiency is king (industrial revolution). You can view the meatballs as commodities. He also mentioned how advertising such as TV commercials were used to promote and market these products. Companies made average products for average people and used TV to get their message across. In order for TV advertising to work, you had to make an average product that appealed to the masses. The topping part is new marketing (web 2.0) or the new trends in marketing.  So take a commodity, marketing dresses it up using new tactics, and what comes out the door is a meatball sundae.  Not exactly very appealing (a representation of why it doesn't work).

Seth said that there is a lot of opportunity in the new world of marketing but you can't just throw new marketing 2.0 stuff on top of an average product to be more successful. Companies that have been successful with new marketing, are inherently different companies (compared to meatball makers). Darren Barefoot took  great notes on the specific trends and examples presented in the webinar.

If meatball sundaes sound like what goes on in your company and you find that disturbing, you might want to check out the book - Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync. You can also download the related manifesto from ChangeThis. ChangeThis is a wonderful place to find a fresh  perspective on business, culture, or technology (amongst other things). They publish articles, more like presentations, called manifestos, about changing the world. They are free (no ads), you download the manifestos (beautifully presented pdfs) and then ponder..reflect, and possibly approach a problem with a new perspective. ChangeThis is a nice and neat experience, and it helps to spread good ideas. (not surprising - the original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin).

I haven't read Meatball Sundae yet, but I will eventually. I have most of Seth's other books, and I highly recommend them for when you need to get into the "think different, be different" mode,  or need inspiration to change (or ammunition to present change to the higher ups). I bet some day there will be a Seth Godin boxed set (maybe including his action figure that came out recently).

This is a classic one-liner from his  blog, that comes to my mind often:

The two reasons people say no to your idea

"It's been done before"
"It's never been done before"

Even though neither one is truthful, accurate or useful, you need to be prepared for both.

Seth calls himself an agent of change. I can personally attest to this, because it was after reading Small is the New Big, that I started writing this blog!

"It's been done before"
"It's never been done before"

Even though neither one is truthful, accurate or useful, you need to be prepared for both.

Seth calls himself an agent of change. I can personally attest to this, because it was after reading Small is the New Big, that I started writing this blog!

Peter Drucker Quote on Leadership

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” - Peter Drucker

I saw this quote  plastered across one of the walls at the Toronto Board of Trade yesterday.  I've always been amazed by the wisdom of Peter Drucker, and never come across a more admirable approach to leadership.

I first become acquainted with Peter Drucker listening to BusinessWeek - Climbing the Ladder, a podcast by Executive Editor John Byrne. At the end of his podcasts there is usually a short reading from one of Peter Drucker's books. 

If you are looking for best practices on business effectiveness such as setting the right priorities, making better decisions, and contributing more effectively to your your organization, consider reading a classic -  The Effective Executive: The Definite Guide to Getting the Right Things Done.

Duct Tape Marketing - Monthly Marketing Leadership Teleseminar Series

John Jantsch of  Duct Tape Marketing will be interviewing some interesting folks such as Guy Kawasaki, John Battelle, Michael Gerber, David Allen, Tim Ferriss, and Seth Godin.

 I am excited because John Jantsch is one of my favourite marketing leaders, along with many of the interviewees.  For more information visit Duct Tape Marketing.

 I had the pleasure of attending a half-day referral marketing workshop with John Jantsh earlier this year. I’ve also read parts of his book, and listen to his podcasts. If you are a small business and are looking for practical marketing advice, ideas, strategies,  and a system, I highly recommend you check out his book “Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide”,  blog, and podcasts. 

 

A New Perspective on Tradeshows

I apologize for the lack of posting recently. June is one of the busiest times of the year for me--working in the IT B2B marketing industry. Also, in the past few months, I have been spending a considerable amount of time on re-assessing, researching, and developing a new approach to tradeshows and events. 

With the help of a book, I did a lot of things differently this year for our biggest industry tradeshow. The book is called Trade Show and Event Marketing: Plan, Promote, and Profit by Ruth Stevens.  I can't begin to tell you how this book inspired, taught, and guided me to do exactly what the title says - plan, promote, and profit.  It will be awhile before I can determine ROI (return on investment). However, right after the show, I was able to measure some of my ROO (return on objectives). By choosing measurable objectives from very early on in my plan, I was able focus on results. Here are some of the key things I learned from my research and the book:

• Understanding the value, strengths, weaknesses of a tradeshow
• How to approach tradeshows strategically
• How to choose objectives & measures
• The importance of  pre-event campaigns and post-event activities
• How to sell at the tradeshow (engage, qualify, present, capture information, disengage)
• How to prepare effective sales and/or booth staff training

I hope to dive into these areas later, but for now I'd like to recommend this book and a few other resources to anyone that does or is considering tradeshow marketing:

• PODCAST: B2B Lead Generation Blog - Tradeshow and Event Marketing with Ruth Stevens podcast - this is what interested me to dig deeper into the value of Tradeshows
• BOOK: Trade Show and Event Marketing: Plan, Promote, and Profit by Ruth Stevens
• TRADESHOW TIPS from Skyline Displays
  
• Exhibiting Success Newsletter - from the Tradeshow Coach

Explore B2B Branding

I just read Jon Miller's post on B2B branding, interesting. And ironically, I was reading about B2B branding on my 5 minute subway ride home.  It was an article from BtoB Magazine called "Emotional connection with brand is important" and it discussed presentations at  a recent ISMB B2B conference.

The article mentioned Philip Kotler, who is a well known marketing professor (Kellog School of Management), author, and strategist. Kotler has written a new book called B2B Brand Management.

The book explores the advantages of strong brand, such as higher prices (or margins), lower customer churn, as well as lower employee turnover.  Another speaker at the conference, John Fleming, principal of Gallup Organization, made a very interesting point. He said that "Satisfying customers is not sufficient", and notes that customers that are "passionate" about a brand deliver two times profitability of average customers. Fleming added that branding is not only important to customers but to employees. Employees need to be emotionally connected to the company brand so that the company can reach top performance.  This point makes a lot of sense to me. Sales people, probably engage more with customers when they love their company brand (not just the products) and customers pick up on this energy.  I'm sure it goes beyond sales/marketing positions, it applies to the whole company.

B2B brand is often neglected especially by small companies. I mentioned in my last post how Sun Microsystems changed their brand from high end server to a real systems company. That is a big company example, but still relevant.

Big or small, I think all B2B companies should continue to explore the importance of brand, and especially look at web 2.0 (if they haven't already) and how it impacts  or could impact their brand.

For more information, please read Jon's post (as well, he has two more sections planned on B2B branding). As well find a related post at Marketing Interactions blog. And don't miss this fantastic article from gapingvoid.

Got a great B2B presentation to share?

Guy Kawasaki mentioned a contest today in his blog, called the World's Best Presentation Contest. The comments in the blog brought up the point  - how can you judge a presentation without the presenter?  The contest and site slideshare (it is like a youtube for presentations) is worth visiting. If you have a good presentation, take a shot, you'll get some views and there are also some cool prizes :)

Guy's 10/20/30 rule which I wrote about previously, has greatly improved our sales presentations but I still feel like I'm continuously trying to improve presentations. I don't give them much, but I prepare them for events and our sales folks. I've found some good information on Presentation Zen. I've been looking for a book about presenting information visually for marketing and sales (more from the concept side rather than how-to in powerpoint). I recently ordered Envisioning Information by Tufte. If you know of any good books on this, please let me know.

Who is responsible for lead generation - Marketing or Sales?

One of my main responsibilities in the past few years was to increase marketing activities. My company wanted to focus on business seminars to improve customer relationships.  So over the years I have been concentrating on this. Working in a small company, resources are scarce, and putting on seminars takes a good amount of time. I  have some support from my vendor partners, and have learned how to leverage them as best as possible. The part that helped me the most though in raising the level of activity was planning and process. I was able to plan quarters ahead (instead of scrambling to get something on the calendar for next month). I was able to avoid a lot of stress and unplanned activities by being on schedule and having a documented process.  As well I had a plan that I could always go back to for improvement.

A new problem emerged. Suddenly I had a lot of inquiries and I was passing them on to sales.  We were calling them leads, but they were really "unqualified leads".  I started to ask  a lot of questions like were my leads any good, and was sales following up on my leads, and hang on, what exactly is a lead, when and how do I pass leads off, how could I track these things, and why am I not tracking this!!. (if you are wondering, yes, I started to lose sleep over this).

I started researching these issues, and came to recognize my dilemma as a major "disconnect" between sales and marketing. I realized that I was not alone and that a lot of organizations were having the same issue. The question remained however: whose job is it to create and manage leads? I was creating  more than enough "leads" and passing them along, wasn't that enough? 

I found quite a few good resources, but nothing sank in or put it all together the way Brian Carroll did in his book "Lead Generation for the Complex Sale". In future posts I want to talk more about his strategy, the book, and what I've implemented so far. For now, for those of you that are struggling with these issues, I recommend following Brian's blog - B2B Lead Generation Blog. Also, here are some other resources that have shaped my thinking:

• AMA: A Multimodal Approach to Lead Nurturing for Complex Sales
  This webcast will introduce you to some of Brian's strategies and cover high level ideas from his book

• Duct Tape Marketing: Sales vs. Marketing Podcast
  This podcast illustrates the difference in how sales and marketing thinks!


• MarketingSherpa: Lead Scoring & Management Roundtable
  This is a special report where 6 experts  (one of which is Brian Carrol) share their views on lead qualification.  You must be a member to read, or you can sign up for a trial membership.  BTW, MarketingSherpa is an excellent resource, especially their B2b newsletter. They have  real-life case studies,  practical  know-how articles, and benchmark data.  Last year I purchased a report called Business Technology Benchmark Guide. It was worth every cent.


• KnowledgeStorm: The Fine Art of Lead Qualification
  Great statistics and best practices (leans towards online leads, but can apply to offline).  If you want prove of how important timing is when following up with an inquiry,  you'll find data to support this. You may need to register for this whitepaper (well worth it).

There are a lot of resources, insights and information on the subject of lead generation and I can't hope to document them all. The most important thing is to recognize and understand the problem in your organization, and find a way to tackle the issue.

And for those of you that have lead generation and nurturing programs in place already --- boy do I envy you. Especially if you played a part in starting one up, or improving one.  Please tell me it looked like Mount Everest at one time (looking up), and let me know what it feels like at the top :)

 

Start or improve a business blog

I've just finished reading Publish & Prosper: Blogging for your Business and come away with some fantastic ideas for this blog and a company blog. From a B2B marketing perspective I would recommend this book to help:

1. Build a business case for your blog (purpose, benefits)
2. Create a project plan (resources required, build, launch, maintain)
3. Develop a marketing plan for your blog (promote and measure)

If you already have a business blog, some of the latter chapters are more valuable such as Writing Your Blog (chapter 6), and Monitoring and Managing Your Blog (chapter 8), but I think you can pick up on several points throughout the book, to improve your blog.

Publish & Prosper is a practical guide on how to create a successful business blog. The authors are knowledgeable about business blogging (and blogging in general), and the information is presented in appealing and well organized way. As well, the book is filled with useful examples, tips, and resources. Whether you'd like to start or improve your business blog, I think this book will inspire you, and help you reach your goal.

Top Ten Marketing Podcasts by Guy Kawasaki

This is a fine list of podcasts compiled by Guy Kawasaki. Hear experts discuss the impact of social media on marketing. Thinking about adding blogging, podcasting, social media, to your marketing mix? These podcasts are a good place to start. Don't think that these new mediums are for consumer marketing only, there is a great opportunity for B2B Marketers too...think about engaging and educating your customers and prospects, building your brand and loyalty, even lead generation if done right. Listen Now!

Make sure to listen to Seth Godin's podcast where he talks about his new book  Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas. It is actually an old book as he describes - it is a compilation of his blog posts. The book is filled with examples of how you can be "remarkable", and break through the barriers in your organization or business. A great book for ideas, hey, it inspired me to start writing this blog. More information on Seth Godin can be found here, including excepts from his books and free ebooks.