Sales Pipeline Radio

How consolidating your integrated communications can accelerate awareness.

Matt Heinz and Kevin Akeroyd, CEO of Cision tell more of the story. Introducing the B2B Marketing Communications Cloud – how consolidating your integrated communications can accelerate awareness, interest and sales pipeline contribution.

About our guest:

Kevin Akeroyd oversees the Cision executive management team across operations globally.

He has more than 25 years of experience in reshaping modern digital, social and mobile marketing globally. Prior to Cision he was general manager and senior vice president at Oracle Marketing Cloud. Akeroyd and Oracle created the Enterprise Marketing Platform category and led it from the onset. Prior to Oracle, he held senior leadership positions at several companies, including Data.com, Salesforce.com, RR Donnelley, and Jigsaw.

Secrets to effective, high performing B2B content

Matt's guest in this episode is Shannon Dougall, Vice President of Marketing at Uberflip. They just returned from the annual Content to Conversion Conference in Scottsdale, AZ. It combines content and demand generators together. Some of the points they are covering are:

• Results from research highlighting the most important content features
• Examples of successful, sales-converting content campaigns
• Key B2B content trends for 2017

What are you seeing in the field and trends?

Seeing overall that B2B marketers believe that content is more important than ever. 84% of B2B marketers are looking to increase their investment in content this year. 55% of marketing budgets are spent in content investment. But they are saying their content is under-performing. Why? Possible answers are:

1. Their content isn't very good.

2. The experience surrounding the content isn't performing.

3. OR they are not able to see the results to properly measure the success.

For content to be successful, it definitely needs to be engaging. To do this, need to consider the medium - read, interact - either way, it needs to be insightful, relevant and something other than what the "other guys" are producing. The content has to be action-oriented. You have to have a piece of content that you expect something to happen at the end. This should be common sense, but it is often forgotten in the rush to meet the content quota and flood the venues.

Get an actionable list of insights from Shannon from the full episode. Listen now.

 

About our guest:

Shannon Dougall has been called, “a marketer of the future.” She is an adventurer, scientist, and artist in the field of marketing. She had been compared to a Swiss Army Knife, using her experiences and learnings towards an all-in-one type of demand generation and customer acquisition that includes storytelling, blogging, lifecycle marketing, digital marketing, SEO, paid advertising, email marketing, social media marketing, positioning, pre-product/product marketing, app store marketing, content marketing, growth hacking, and analytics just to name a few. Shannon’s true north is to help business’ transform to realize their true potential.

Is sales something you’re born with?

Some of the questions Matt asked our guest, Ronald Brock included: 

Is sales something you’re born with? Is it something you can learn? And I think the perspective you take in this book is very much, I am quoting here you say you can take someone who is untrained, otherwise someone ordinary, sort of an average person who is starting in sales and transform them into someone of in your words – notable superiority. And so this idea includes a number of best practices and or secrets if you will to do that, is that still inaccurate representation? 

He starts out by telling us, "Well, every salesman did during my time period; reading a few books about selling then having no knowledge whatsoever and developing my own style. And what I discovered was it was fine but it worked for me and not for the people that I was trying to turn into salesman when I became a sales manager. And that involved me moving into developing a format that anyone could use rather than just the what you think of as the born salesman. So if you take someone who has very little charisma, they can be turned into a great salesman." 

Another tidbit from the show:

Matt covered, "On one hand I think there’s a lot of great new intelligence and understanding of how sales operates in an increasingly complex world but on the other hand we are still people selling to people and I think some of the fundamentals of selling from Dale Carnegie, from Zig Ziglar can sometimes get lost. Are there any best practices or advice you would give people the sort of balance those two approaches, sort of the traditional with the new?"

Ron says, "Well those particular complications dealt heavily with how to develop yourselves to be the kind of person that people want to deal with. It’s referred to as a halo effect. If you are a really attractive person, in some ways that means you’re also honest and forthright so somebody you should deal with."

You'll have to listen to the episode for the full story and insights.

Ronald Brock is the author of the book Gamebreaker: A guide to world-class selling. You can find it on Amazon.com you can also check it out and learn more about Ron at www.gamebreakerbook.com.

Account Based Marketing - Joys and Failures

We have guest Lauren Vaccarello who is the vice president of marketing at Box. We are going to be talking a lot about software as a service, sales and marketing and how to do that effectively. This conversation on account-based revenue – targeting the right accounts, partnering with sales, the joys & failures & adjustments associated with execution.

Lauren Vaccarello (@laurenv) is a business leader with a proven track record of building high performing marketing teams and accelerating revenue growth. With a strong background in demand generation, she excels at building scalable integrated campaigns that leverage cutting edge marketing techniques. Although performance is at the core of who she is as a marketer, she believes businesses need to tell compelling stories and build a brand if they want to own a category.

How to Balance the Art & Science of Selling and more with David Priemer

David Priemer is Vice President of Sales at Influititive.

Psychology of sales - sales has evolved a lot ove rthe years. Vendors used to have all the information. The relationship between buyer and seller has fundamentally changed thanks to the Internet. Emotional intelligence and sales psychology has become tremendously important. 

Matt asked David what he recommended to sales managers, leaders and trainers about implementingand integrating a better sales psychology and sales practices. 

"Old ways are selling... we try our best pitches, we make calls..." This doesn't fly anymore. Time is too precious. Social Selling methodologies and tactics make the best use of everyone's time, including the target buyer.

 

 

Marketing Trends and Getting Started in ABM in 2017

Our guest is Shari Johnston who is the senior vice president of marketing at Radius and has an illustrious career in marketing. At some point we are going to talk about Santa.com I promise but before we get to that we will talk a few other things.

Some of what they discussed included:

Where are the places that you are putting bets on to drive marketing results in 2017?

What are some of the best practices you see working that can help B2B companies continue innovate and be successful and proactive on the acquisition side but really to take a full lifecycle, full lifetime value approach to the customer?

What does it take to run and execute marketing in that fast-paced environment where you are expecting and hoping, the entire company wants fast results but that doesn’t always jive with buying cycles, doesn’t always jive with just what it takes to do marketing, right? How do you balance that tension?

What about the cultural changes that are sometimes involved in helping organizations, helping sales, helping executive team, helping a board rethink how to look at what marketing is doing more on the quality versus quantity standpoint?

Were there any growing pains or I guess like migration pains as you moved the way marketing is perceived from a volume-based story to a quality at conversion-based story? Was that difficult for even sort of sales counterparts let alone C-suite and board to understand and get behind?

Listen to the show for the answers and more.

Explaining the prediction and arrival of the ABM wave

Our guest is Jon Miller, CEO and Co-Founder of Engagio. Here are some of the questions Matt covers:

• When did you see the ABM wave coming?  At what point did you start to realize that lead-based wasn’t going to cut it anymore?
• One of my biggest concerns with the term ABM is the “marketing” part of it, but “everything” feels to broad.  How do you think about that? 
• Culture is a big part of making ABM work internally.  How do you encourage people to make the right internal moves to be successful with ABM?
• This isn’t all-or-nothing right?  How does ABM integrate with other key marketing priorities moving forward?

About our guest: Jon Miller

Jon is a marketing entrepreneur and thought leader. He is currently the CEO and co-founder of Engagio, an account-centric platform to orchestrate and measure Account Based Marketing and Sales Development efforts at named accounts. Previously, Jon was a co-founder at Marketo (Nasdaq:MKTO), a leader in marketing automation.

Marketing technology innovator, with previous leadership roles at Epiphany and Xchange, plus board/advisory roles at Scripted, Newscred, and Optimizely.

Discover fundamental metrics to understand pipeline health.

Attribution, analytics and analyzing data is today's topic. What does the report say? Does it accurately display the past and does it accurately help us predict the future?

Marketers are in a world of big data. We've gone from nothing to overload. So there is a lot to help marketers in high tech and not in high tech of how to best use the data available to them. 

"How do I interpret the data?" Perhaps a better question is, "What answers and knowledge am I seeking to move forward?"

You need to organize the metrics to interpret the metrics. The questions of what you seek are critical.

Do we have the fundamental metrics that the business needs to understand the health of the business?

Within the channels of my function, how do I use metrics to ensure that my efforts are working?

Do we have the capabilities to answer the adhoc questions that come up in business?

Listen to this show to get a more organized list of what you need to know first before you even pull the data.

About our guest, Jeff Day:

Jeff is a Marketing and Product Management executive with a focus on startup and high-growth technology companies. Jeff excels at applying the right mix of marketing for the right stage of company in order to maximize growth. With 20 years of proven success with companies such as Highspot, DomainTools, Apptio, Enodo Software, HP, PolyServe and Intel, he has run all aspects of marketing and delivered industry-leading software and hardware products. He is passionate about working with high growth product companies to help drive marketing and product strategy, build happy and productive teams and maximize company success.

High-level trends and intimacy of insight.

Our guest this episode is Don Gregory, the founder of On-Target Consulting.

Some of the points covered are:

The importance of gathering market insights, marketing intelligence, doing research to understand what the markets is interested in.
About the importance of having those insights at the front of the process to guide and help navigate product development, message development, et cetera.

If you are highly confident that you know your customer, you know your marketplace, your competition, emerging trends with your consumers, you can argue that you don’t need to get insight early on in the process of going to market and figuring out how to take products and services to market. The reality is that most companies and most leaders really don’t have that insight. What makes it worse is that many of the companies in my opinion who are providing market research are providing facts and data, they are really not driving to try to understand the consumer, what the consumer is looking for whether it be B2B, B2C, it really does not make any difference, the process is the same.

Matt asked, "Why is it so important to make sure you are approaching this research right? Maybe a different way of asking that is what it is sometimes dangerous to have company insiders do their own research?"

Don responded with, "Their bias to start with. And they don’t know that many… I do the research completely inside and go out I bring a natural bias to me, with me as I do that investigation. And the rigor has to be impartial and has to be neutral. When I am looking for an answer to a question, I have to have integrity in process and in actions to make sure that I work an honest answer to what I am looking for versus – here is my assumption on what the answer is therefore am going to ask the question to assume and get the answer that I am looking for.

And it is subtle because when you are on the inside I don’t think you understand that bias that you carry and that’s why I think the rigor for having somebody or some organization from the outside who has the expertise in looking in at business situations as well as the business savvy to really look and understand sort of what the key questions are. Once you understand what they key questions are, the areas of investigation are, then to effectively find out the answers to those questions."

Listen to the full episode to learn more.

Matt Heinz Top 10 Reading List of Business Books 2016

Matt's annual, "What he read in the year" episode is here. This is a great place for a filtered reading list. Some familiar authors in this list and some you may not have had a chance to read. I love the One True Barbecue and how it applies to business. Have recommendations? Add them in the comments. 

Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini

Anything on the science of influence is absolutely fascinating to me – whether it’s about influencing fans, customers or myself.  Cialdini’s book Influence is a classic, and this sequel/prequel is a must-read to understand how your sales team (and marketing/content teams) can set the conditions for influence and conversion better in 2017.

The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need by Anthony Iannarino

If it weren’t for all the other great sales books on the market (this year and in recent years), I’d say the title of this book is 100% the truth. Anthony is one of the very best sales bloggers and speakers working today, and this book summarizes much of his very best advice.  I highly recommend expanding your sales library, but if there is just one book on the shelf, this should probably be it.

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette

A fascinating and fast read, with numerous business lessons included.  What differentiates a trend from a fad?  How can you tell you have something sustainable and repeatable?  The story of the rise and fall (both fast & dramatic) of the Beanie Baby craze is chronicled with a great combination of business advice and juicy insider stories.  A fun read with value.

High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results by Mark Hunter

The most important, eternal, fundamental sales skill is prospecting.  Whether you’re working ice-cold leads or warm inquiries from your marketing team, you’re still prospecting.  Activity and volume isn’t enough.  This book features new trends and research, plus a proven framework of habits to accelerate your sales pipeline-building results in 2017.

More Sales, Less Time: Surprisingly Simple Strategies for Today’s Crazy-Busy Sellers by Jill Konrath

Every one of Jill’s books have been fanastic, but this might be her best yet.  She’s previously covered how to work with crazy-busy buyers, now she addresses the problem every single sales rep I know has – how to make best use of their time to increase active selling time, external impact and results.

The One True Barbecue: Fire, Smoke, and the Pitmasters Who Cook the Whole Hog by Rein Fertel

I’ll give away the punchline – according to Rein, the only “true” barbecue is 1) whole hog, 2) cooked over wood in 3) a masonry pit.  A difficult combination for amateur BBQ enthusiasts to replicate, but this amazing book covers the history of whole-hog BBQ while simultaneously covering the history and anthropology of the Carolinas.  If you like BBQ or history or good story-telling, you’ll like this book.

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

What separates this book from so many other business autobiographies is its focus, candor and detail.  It’s not an ego-driven puff piece, nor does it sugar-coat what growing a business is like.  The book starts with Phil’s inspiration to start the business, and ends before the IPO.  In between, he highlights the numerous times Nike almost didn’t make it, almost ran out of money, almost went out of business – yet somehow figured out (or stumbled into) how to keep moving forward. It's a story of humility and gratitude.  One of the best books I’ve read on the real story of entrepreneurship in a long time.

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eli Goldratt

This book was originally written in 1984, but I re-read it earlier this year to reinforce Eli’s Theory of Constraints.  Think about your business today – what’s the #1 constraint keeping you from growing, that when alleviated would help everything else work more efficiently?  This book is a great example of business fiction (if you’ve read Five Disfunctions of a Team, you know the format).

Spinach in Your Boss’s Teeth: Essential Etiquette for Professional Success by Arden Clise

This book is a differentiator.  It covers what all too often is a lost art of habits, manners, mannerisms and more that get noticed, differentiate you as someone special, and can material help you win more business.  Maybe not on your “mainstream” business reading list but it should be.

Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life by Eric Greitens

Published as a set of letters to a struggling and fellow former SEAL, this book pulls deeply from ancient literature and lessons on what resilience means, how it applies to our lives, and how to apply it to make ourselves better – personally, professionally and in all points between.  This is the last book I read this year and might be my favorite of the bunch.

REQUESTING YOUR ASSISTANCE - Trying to find who orignally said, 

"The Path to Success: There is no elevator, you have to take the stairs."