(This article was previously published on Technorati.com.)
Countless books have been written, extolling the virtues of sales training. All of them miss the point. Companies’ sales efforts fail, not so much because their sales people don’t know how to sell, but because they’re not being well managed. Read more
We confess: we often swim against the tide. And, no doubt, we’ll be skewered by every ad agency rep who reads this post. But the time has come to ask B2B marketers, “So who’s in charge of your advertising budget – you or that pimply kid from the ad agency?”
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In the four decades since Jack Cakebread began making wine, Cakebread Cellars has established its position among the finest wines in America. Recently, MarketPoint asked Bruce Cakebread, the company’s President and COO, to share his views on the Cakebread brand.
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Those who are faithful readers of this blog know that we are not prone to trivialities.
But in a week that saw Facebook go public and Zuckerberg get married, we just had to wonder what stories lay quiet in the backwaters… And there we found 27-year-old Priscilla Chan. Read more
One of the challenges associated with operating a consulting firm in a mid-sized market is that people start to learn your schtick. And occasionally, when we’re out on the town, someone will walk up to us and ask, with a grin, “Do I really need a brand management strategy?” So, to simplify the answer as much as possible, we’ve put together a little decision tree, which we encourage you to download and keep handy.
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Words are powerful things. We count on them to convey meaning. And sometimes they do their job too well.
Just last month, an former colleague told me how proud she was that she was tolerant of a young man I admire.
“Tolerant?” I asked. “What does that mean, exactly?” Read more
If you manage marketing in the B2B world, it’s almost impossible to escape responsibility for spearheading your company’s participation in industry events. And if your CEO is a stickler for ROI (and most B2B CEOs are), you’re probably tired of justifying the high cost of attendance. …particularly when the only thing you have to show for your investment is a stack of dog-eared business cards and a pile of bar receipts.
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One of the questions we field regularly from CEOs is “How much should it cost, as a percent of revenue, to launch a product, successfully?”
The question, itself, is completely legitimate. It’s imperative for anyone who brings a new product or service to market to have a predetermined “point of no return” – even if you willingly ignore that marker, when you actually hit it. Read more
For years (3 in one industry and 9 in another), I worked side by side – even partnered – with a very wise businessman: two Master’s degrees from Columbia, a serial entrepreneur, and a sensible economist. One day, he said something that made every hair on the back of my neck stand up. It really bothered me. In fact, it flew in the face of everything I held dear.
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