I had one of those delightful “aha” moments at conference recently.

I had just heard Erin Crowe, CFO at Senators Sports and Entertainment, and Isabelle Perreault, VP Digital Transformation at Stratford Managers, deliver a rousing presentation on the business transformat...

Even the most died-in-the-wool marketing skeptic will grudgingly admit that marketing has some positive effect.  The debate is usually about how much and whether it’s worth the precious dollars spent.  All marketing teams must provide proof of their impact or risk bein...

Recently I’ve been working with some experienced product managers on an exciting and innovative program.  These people spend most of their time threading needles:  figuring out how to triage the many demands of lead customers while getting the most from their limited R...

The shift from product marketing to solutions marketing is a significant transformation for any company.  It represents a maturing from self-centered emphasis on product features (“speeds and feeds” in technology parlance) to customer-centered problem solving.  It’s th...

Whenever I hear a marketer complaining about a lack of thought-leadership content or bemoaning no action on the “thousands of leads” he’s sending to Sales my alarm bells start ringing. My worst fears are usually confirmed when I discover the Sales team’s frustration wi...

Another missed sales forecast. Damn!  Your product just isn’t selling and there’s lots of frustration and plenty of blame to go around. You pull together the Sales and Marketing teams for a brainstorming session but all you get are shrugged shoulders, pointed fingers a...

A Sales VP is on the sharp end of the stick. There’s nowhere to hide. They often take the fall for all the shortcomings in the performance of a business including poor product (quality, value proposition, etc), incorrect pricing, bad marketing (lack of awareness, unqua...

Jim Collins introduced the concept of “the Genius of the AND” to millions of managers in his book Built to Last – Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. In so doing he inspired visionary leaders but also created a bolt-hole for vacillating senior executives everywhe...

Pricing – it isn’t glamorous but it certainly has a long-term impact on sales effectiveness and profitability.  It’s actually one of the most important things a marketer does. Here’s a primer on what to think about when tackling those tough pricing decisions:

• Start...

Before there were websites, even before there was an Internet, the place where “conversion” occurred was on the pages of a well prepared proposal. Even today for many B2B companies, the customer proposal is the final and most important step in converting customer inter...