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 transformation at Senators Sports and Entertainment. The Senators’ vision is to deliver a world-class fan experience in all aspects of their business. What they do on-line is big part of it. Then came Frederick Lecoq, Senior Vice President Marketing at FGL Sports. For a B2B marketer like me, listening to a consumer, retail marketer is a guilty pleasure. Frederick talked about his experience transforming a traditional bricks-and-morta

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 being starved for investment. The ultimate proof of success is revenue but because deals often take time to close, marketers use proxies to measure progress through the buying cycle. Things like opens, clicks, repeated visits, page view durations, likes, downloads, webinar attendance and tradeshow booth registrations all point to increasing prospect engagement which is an indicator of propensity to purchase. However, sometimes th

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&D budget. The result is a pragmatic list of features, each of which has a rock-solid justification. Unfortunately, the combined product release is sometimes barely marketable. The reason is that it doesn’t tell any sort of story. What I mean is that it isn’t underpinned by a thematic set of guiding product design principles or long-term customer objectives. It’s just a list of unconnected (although probably frequently requ

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 the basis for establishing long term, trusted relationships with clients that will weather the appearance of shiny new things from competitors. At its core, solutions marketing frames the purpose of your products and services in the context of the business pressures faced by your customer. You put on your customer hat, think about what keeps them up at night and explain how your products can be applied to solve those problems. A

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 with a Marketing department that isn’t generating actionable leads. Are these people working for the same company? The career-limiting disconnect is that they are talking about different ends of the funnel! The biggest trap that marketers fall into, and the reason they sometimes lack credibility within their organization (and ultimately get fired) is that they put too much effort into top-of-funnel demand generation before ensuri

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 and crossed arms. Here are three creative techniques to break the logjam and kickstart product sales. 1. Check For Leaks First you need to check for leaks in your funnel. Hopefully you have a structured lead generation process and monitor your success at each stage of the marketing/sales funnel. Review your metrics to understand what is being lost at each stage. Is your audience big enough? Are they opening your emails and read