Business Growth Strategies For CEOs: Top CMOs On Marketing Strategy Implementations

CEO Go-To-Market Warning: Avoid the Blind Spots That Cause Products to Miss the Mark | Part 3

Wed, Dec 7, 2022 | Posted by Jennifer Apy

Part 3: Do you have Product-Market Fit?

There’s a time-honored Chinese proverb that the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. But did you know that one of technology’s greatest recent success stories started with a “Tiny Speck?”

In fact, it was only about 13 years ago that entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield was knee-deep into the development of Tiny Speck’s first game, Glitch. To accelerate the process, he launched an internal messaging platform called “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge” – or Slack for short.

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Lead Incubation Has a New Shape: The Marketing Hourglass Has Supplanted the Sales Funnel

Tue, Jun 21, 2022 — You spend countless hours, and endless resources, to encourage your sales team to dump leads into the top of your sales funnel, with the hopes of squeezing them through the tiny orifice at the bottom. Once those precious few fall out the bottom and onto your client rolls, now what? With an overheated market, dogged competition, and an enlightened consumer that is more fickle than ever, how can you make sure all of that effort is worth it? How can you ensure that you keep what is rightfully yours?

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.

Changing the Conversation: How ABM Helped One Company to Break the Mold

Fri, Oct 22, 2021 — Written by Don Lee, with Greg Acquavella, Senior Marketing Manager, Gryphon.AI Sales and marketing technologies have transformed the way companies attract and retain business. Just ask the team at Gryphon.AI, which has developed a unique solution to businesses that wish to improve their sales efficacy. Using a concept called “real-time conversation intelligence,” Gryphon uses an AI platform to provide in-the-moment call coaching and guided selling.

Finding the Sweet Spot in B2B Markets

Fri, May 1, 2020 — Narrowing Focus to Drive Demand In a prior blog post, I discussed how a lack of market focus can lead to poor marketing campaign conversion rates.

Five Major Indicators that Suggest a Need for Focus

Tue, Mar 3, 2020 — A Common Challenge for B2B technology, SaaS and Professional Services Businesses If market demand was a fixed commodity, attracting new business would require only that you create awareness and build interest around well-known needs. Companies who see their marketplace in this way often subscribe to a “lather, rinse, repeat,” approach to pipeline management – focusing marketing dollars on prospects already well-along their purchasing journey, identifying qualified opportunities, but paying little attention to the world of prospects who do not yet see their needs as urgent.

The Traditional Marketing and Sales Funnel is Dead. Welcome the Intelligent Sales Pipeline™!

Mon, May 6, 2019 — Improving Your Lead Generation and Qualification Processes Mark Coronna, Area Managing Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders with Jeff Parris and Daniel Steyn, Fractional Sales Executives, Sales Xceleration Sometimes we take certain business models for granted. The model of a “funnel” to represent a sales pipeline is certainly one example. Dusting off its past, a gentleman named E. St. Elmo Lewis is generally given credit for initiating the idea of a funnel in 1898. The author is also credited for introducing the first formal theory of Marketing. It would be amazing that a model like a funnel would still find relevance 120 years later. There have been previous attempts at calling the funnel “dead.” In a 2016 article in Marketing Week, Mark Ritson declared that “If you think the funnel is dead, you have mistaken tactics for strategy.”

Marketing (As You Know It) Is Toast

Tue, Feb 27, 2018 — The old style of marketing is toast. Quite literally, the entire phase shift that has changed the way the public considers and consumes products and services, can be distilled down to a single, perfectly-browned-on-both-sides slice of artisan bread.

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Growth Insights for CEOs

CEO Go-To-Market Warning: Avoid the Blind Spots That Cause Products to Miss the Mark | Part 3

Part 3: Do you have Product-Market Fit?

Recent Posts

Lead Incubation Has a New Shape: The Marketing Hourglass Has Supplanted the Sales Funnel

Tuning Your Growth Engine: How Insights Power Market Success

Driving Revenue, Part 2: Death of the MQL

Stay up-to-date with the latest from Chief Outsiders

Driving Revenue with Marketing: How to Reap the Rewards of a Mutually Beneficial Plan

Changing the Conversation: How ABM Helped One Company to Break the Mold

Finding the Sweet Spot in B2B Markets

Five Major Indicators that Suggest a Need for Focus

The Traditional Marketing and Sales Funnel is Dead. Welcome the Intelligent Sales Pipeline™!

Marketing (As You Know It) Is Toast

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