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Turning Competing Revenue Team Truths into Market Insight
| Executive Takeaways |
| Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success each see valid but incomplete versions of the market. |
An Executive’s Guide to Using Video to Win Business and Influence Deals
Tue, Jul 17, 2018 — First in a 3-part series on Growing Revenue in the Digital Age. Video works. It’s a powerful way to tell stories, position products and engage viewers. Most importantly, video can directly help companies grow revenue, increase pipeline and build awareness. It appeals to both the rational and emotional ways we make decisions. It’s also a preferred way to consume content. Face it, no one wants to read long whitepapers any more. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, recently said “Video is a mega trend, in a decade, video will look like as big a shift in the way we share and communicate as mobile has been.”
CEOs: What’s your Competitor’s Plan to Win?
Wed, Oct 18, 2017 — Part 4 of Creating Sustainability for the Business “How could she not see this coming?” Look in the mirror. Armed with a strategic plan built on the foundation of purpose and stocked with customer insight, it’s now time to look closely at the competition. Learning how your competitors plan to defeat your strategy will fortify your plan to achieve long-term success.
CEOs: Go Deep for your Customers!
Mon, Aug 14, 2017 — Part 3 of Creating Sustainability for the Business A Sea of Sameness “So, what do you think of our website?” This was a new client—at my first on-site meeting with the CEO. “You have great product merchandising, well-written features and benefits. Could use some work on the ecommerce side,” I replied. “What I’m not clear on, though, is this, ‘Who is your customer, and how do you help them?’”
Sales and Marketing Synergy: Why Cross-Functional Alignment is No Longer Just an Option
Thu, Jul 20, 2017 — As a CEO, you strive for harmony among your functional teams. It’s a comforting feeling during those weekly leadership meetings to hear that sales and marketing efforts appear to be coordinated – key personnel are collaborating on projects, keeping each other informed, using a common language, and possibly even delivering cross-functional reports from Salesforce and other analytical tools. But beneath this veneer of peaceful coexistence, are your sales and marketing teams truly integrating their efforts in a way that will add impact – and revenue – to your bottom line?
Driving Toward the Long Game: Is your Business Geared for Lasting Success?
Fri, Jun 9, 2017 — In business, the road to financial success, it can be agreed, isn’t always paved in gold. Whether pocked with potholes, laden with land mines, or strewn with stones, the goal isn’t just to keep all four tires on the highway – instead, it’s to ensure you arrive at the destination. One question that you must continually ask yourself along the way – is your business built to go the distance? Understanding whether you’re playing the long game, or the short game, in business can be the key to weathering the road hazards beneath you, or the storms above.
CEOs: What do You Stand For and Who Cares?
Thu, May 25, 2017 — Part 2 of Creating Sustainability for the Business I often work with CEOs who have created an idea and started a business. They grew sales and needed to hire more people along the way, even managers. Most loved the creative journey of getting the business off the ground. They started out thriving as an expert in a business function or leading the development of a product or service. Over time, they grappled with the increasing demands of managing a business with many other function or process leaders. Some have grown the business to the point where they decided to bring in a President to do much of the leading and managing of the business for them. This is the time when answering the question, “What do you stand for?” becomes critical.
What B2B E-commerce can Learn from Consumer Retail
Tue, Apr 25, 2017 — The world of consumer retail is in the midst of rapid transformation. Traffic in brick-and-mortar stores is decreasing. Consumers are moving away from shopping malls. Traditional advertising—whether via direct mail, TV ads or newspaper and magazine ads—is losing its relevance.
Five Steps to Ensuring Strategic Planning Success
Mon, Apr 10, 2017 — Strategic planning – two words that need not strike fear in the hearts of corporate executives. After all, if you think about it, we’ve all been strategic planners since childhood – setting our objectives, then figuring out the best way to make them happen. Like the time you figured out that if you wanted Santa Claus to come, you HAD better go to bed first. And when you were older and setting your sites on a special college. You did your research to understand what they were looking for, you took the right classes and participated in the best extra-curricular activities--all in an effort to present yourself as the type of student they would consider. Of course, now that you are a CEO, the stakes around strategic planning are maybe just a tad bigger. In the bid to get our highest-quality products or services to the market, it will be the strategic planning process – scaled appropriately, of course – that will get us there. Understanding which combination of markets, pricing, offerings for each market segment, distribution channels, communication channels and the like is integral to cracking the ROI code. And with so many options to power today’s strategic plan, it’s hard to fully understand which to do first, and which to leave by the wayside.
Grow From Within: Three Ways to Enlarge Your Slice of the Pie
Sat, Feb 25, 2017 — Psst. I have a secret. I’m talking to you, CEO. While your counterparts are handwringing about how to grow their business by earning more customers, or by stealing more customers from their competition, you and I are going to have a Zen moment.