.png?width=1500&height=398&name=CO_Corporate%20Logo%202021_4C_HOR_FNL-1%20(1).png)
The Chief Outsider
.svg)
Recent Posts
Why MedTech’s Brilliant Innovators Must Also Become Commercial Architects
| Great technology is necessary. It is not sufficient. The graveyard of MedTech is lined with brilliant innovations that never found their market — not because of scientific failure, but commercial invisibility. |
I just returned from LSI USA ‘26 in Dana Point — the most impressive gathering of emerging MedTech talent I’ve witnessed in decades. The event convened 2,000 executives, 394 presenting startups, and over 500 active investors and strategics. The scientific ambition in that room was extraordinary.
How to Achieve Double-Digit Annual Growth
Tue, May 24, 2022 — For CEOs everywhere, the pressure is on. With an overheated economy creating outsized results – and enhanced expectations, “thrive” has replaced “survive” as the mantra in boardrooms across the country. As a result of the “go-go” market conditions, a new benchmark has been established: If your company can't show a minimum Compound Annual Growth Rate of 10 percent, you are putting yourself and your company at risk. As never before, the key to a business's health, high corporate valuations – and CEO job security -- is revenue growth.
Tuning Your Growth Engine: How Insights Power Market Success
Wed, Apr 20, 2022 — “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” ― Peter Drucker Why is it that the best run companies often have the hardest time growing? I recently had the pleasure of exploring this issue while speaking at the Intelligence Leadership Forum (ILF), led by Liam Fahey — who literally wrote the book (well, actually, eight books) on the subject of insights. What we realized is this: Operational excellence – no matter how good it is – can never be sufficient to win in the long term.
Driving Revenue, Part 2: Death of the MQL
Tue, Apr 5, 2022 — Thank you for joining me today for the eulogy of the marketing qualified lead, or MQL. Once hailed as the best way to affix a value to a prospective sale in the digital age, we are here to toll the bell to its early demise. What led to the hastened death of the MQL? A series of innocent crimes, perpetrated by humans who have become too smart and savvy – or simply too absent-minded -- to play the MQL game. Since these leads are typically derived from “mechanical” interactions between human and machine, humans have unintentionally thwarted the system – for example, blindly tapping away on the TouchPad, or leaving a finger or cursor atop an open email, can accidentally score you as a hot lead.
Driving Revenue with Marketing: How to Reap the Rewards of a Mutually Beneficial Plan
Wed, Feb 16, 2022 — (Blog 1) Step Zero: The Dark Funnel If your sales funnel is lurking in the shadows, it may be because it’s filled with people who are trying to avoid the spotlight. Sure, if you’re like most companies, you have the digital tools you need to generate marketing-qualified leads, or MQLs, by the scads and buckets – casting a broad net through newsletters, promotional emails, social media mentions, website interactions – you know, the entire digital gamut. They make your metrics charts look happy but your sales teams – not so much.
What Does it Take to Innovate? Part 6: The Product Launch
Tue, Feb 8, 2022 — By Ahmet Abaci and Beth Somplatsky-Martori Ready for ignition? If you’ve stuck with us for this entire blog series, it’s all come to this moment: Butterflies be damned and dreams and hopes aside – it’s time to launch our new product into the public consciousness. We’ve been on quite a journey through our previous blogs. At the outset, we started off with a discussion about fostering a culture of innovation within a company. And then we introduced what we called our “Stage Gate Lite” approach to fostering and accelerating new product and service ideas, leading you through the four gates in the process: Concept development, the business case, product development, and testing methodology.
An Inward Focus: How One Company Redefined Itself for Success
Mon, Feb 7, 2022 — It’s always interesting to me when the proverbial emperor is in search of new clothes. Like the time-honored fable, Cask – an innovative company that lives and works in the ServiceNow ecosystem – had done an outstanding job of enabling digital transformation for its clients. But when it came to telling their story and harnessing digital marketing tools to promote itself, it wasn’t quite as masterful. The story of how Cask evolved its brand and turned digital marketing into a dominant force in the ServiceNow space – leading to 40 percent year-over-year growth for four consecutive years – is an object lesson that is worth studying for any B2B leader.
Under the Influence: How Your Employees Can Drive Your Social Marketing Engine
Tue, Jan 25, 2022 — Did you know that you might have the next Kim Kardashian or Kylie Jenner on your staff? Though it’s likely that none of your mild-mannered employees have 300 million social media followers piled up –like the aforementioned sisters – it IS possible to turn a team player into a social influencer.
Lead Conversion Lacking? Try Advancing Performance Marketing
Mon, Jan 24, 2022 — Though the past two years will be remembered by most for the impact that COVID had on our lives and livelihoods, most marketers will look back on this time as the era of the “Digital Lead Spigot.” Forced into quarantine at a moment’s notice and anxious to keep their products and services in the consciousness, most businesses – ready or not – twisted the valves on their digital taps and let information flow into and out of their organizations. In fact, one survey found that nearly two-thirds of companies felt forced into accelerating their digital transformation as a result of COVID-19.
How ONE MINOR FLAW can RUIN the Customer Journey
Mon, Dec 13, 2021 — Are you checking every step in your company’s customer journey to make sure that the passage is smooth and rewarding, and in fact, DELIGHTING for your customer? DELIGHT takes so much work by so many people – the product, the website, the employee service training. And DELIGHT is what builds lasting loyalty. And it can all, unfortunately, be spoiled by a minor detail.