To transform a vision into reality, you need to have the confidence that things are getting done. To gain this confidence, a culture of accountability is critical. Building a culture of accountability isn’t easy. Today, accountability has become one of the biggest challenges that business leaders face. But without it, driving success will be a challenge. According to Greg Bustin, author of Accountability: The Key to Driving a High Performance Culture, “Lack of accountability is the single…
Today’s marketing allows you to build your pipeline in ways we never could have five years ago. There have been people over the years who have promoted a singular tactic to drive sales but where we are settling in is exactly where we should be – looking at integrated tactics that marketing and sales can tackle together. It is called Account Based Marketing [ABM] and, if done right, it is a game-changer for companies. It…
Inbound! Inbound! Inbound!! For awhile there, it was all anyone was talking about. Far too many online marketing companies were making it sound like inbound was all any company needed, the proverbial “magic bullet” of marketing solutions. Now, it’s easy to see the appeal. Inbound can be less expensive and fairly easy to implement. Combined with some decently researched SEO, and an inbound focus can help companies -especially smaller firms- gain some leads and overall visibility. But… that’s about it. In…
As salespeople, we know that your #1 priority is to close more deals. Save the analytics, forecasting, cost-per-lead calculation, and reporting for marketing; your job is based on your ability to increase revenue for your company. Putting aside natural salesmanship or tenacity, one important leg of the sales stool is visibility. That means visibility into the pipeline, visibility of key contact information, visibility of behavior and of the support materials you need to sell. Technology…
The great thing about perspective shifts is that they can happen to anyone. It’s that moment when you think, “WHOA I never thought of it that way,” and all of sudden you have a cosmic shift in how you view something or someone. The other great thing about perspective shifts is they happen fast and can have massive impact. I want to talk about the power of perspective shifts and how they can impact our work…
From the very beginning of my days at North Star Marketing, one thing that made me successful then and still today is my respect and love for sales people. As a marketer, that is unfortunately unique. It is with that spirit that we have developed marketing with an eye towards today’s marketing and sales landscape. Today’s marketing and sales landscape Sales people struggle with the limited amount of hours in a day and all they…
There are countless examples of how Jesus continuously developed the disciples to be leaders. Whether it was through real life examples, parables, teachings or sending them off to lead and come back and debrief, Jesus clearly understood that great leaders need to be cultivated and trained…it doesn’t just happen. I believe it is our responsibility as leaders of our companies to prepare those around us to be great leaders with the goal of them leading our companies…
Revenue generation. Predictable growth. Profitability. These are the words that CEOs care deeply about but they’re not words that come to mind for most when they think about marketing. But times are changing, and today many CEOs are starting to look to marketing to gain competitive advantage and drive business success. What happened to cause this shift? The combination of technology and data has dramatically changed how businesses engage, build trust, close deals and retain customers. And this…
Every January, I find myself looking for a plan to be “better” by the end of the year. I start by spending some time with God, seeking where He wants me to grow this year; in other words, where He is going to reveal truth for me to embrace and ultimately allow me more hope, more freedom, and less fear. This takes courage, as it is often an insight to some hard lessons I need…
The Life of the Marketer in 2010 In 2010, I spoke with over 150 CMOs and heads of marketing. For many, it was not a fun time to be in that role. They were all feeling some degree of pressure in these four areas: 1. Due to budget cuts and decreasing staff they felt they were more reactive than proactive when it came to marketing. 2. They often felt like an outsider with no “seat at the…
With 91% of B2B marketers using content marketing, it’s pretty clear that it’s more than just a fad. From blogs, white papers, videos, webinars, case studies, events and a whole lot more, B2B companies are generating staggering amounts of content. But how do you know that your content is reaching the right audience at the right time? Enter content strategy. Content strategy is the glue behind content marketing. While content marketing focuses on generating content…
One of the things marketing and sales can agree on, is the need to differentiate themselves in an ever crowded marketplace. What they may be less likely to agree on, is just how to do that. I believe you have to go back to the beginning and the beginning of differentiation, has to be your brand. Many sales folks don’t have a clear understanding of how important their company’s brand is to their success- and…
Whether you call it telemarketing, telesales or teleprospecting, using the phone as part of your direct marketing strategy can increase response rates by a minimum of 25% and get sales people’s foot in the door which leads to more closed deals. According to Douglas Karr, founder of the Marketing and Technology Blog, “most direct marketing strategies fail because they’re not persistent in calling on the clients who are within their key firmographic.” To prove the…
While many factors can lead to sluggish sales, probably the most critical mistake we see is that a lot of marketers lose sight of who their customers are. We recently worked with a client to help them understand why sales were stagnant. They were doing the same things they always did and what they were doing stopped working. We did some digging and found some issues that created the problem: Sales weren’t using the support…
That’s right, I said amazing. But not everyone would agree with me. In fact, there are several schools of thought out there that think direct mail is dead, old fashioned or that they’ve been there, done that—with little success. We proudly [and quite defiantly] don’t attend or subscribe to any of those schools and instead would like to tell you that it isn’t dead. In fact, when you combine a targeted, direct mail outbound strategy…
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