Demandgen
The other day I read a book on account-based marketing (ABM), entitled ABM is B2B, and I must say I disliked it. Capital D disliked. My Thoughts on the Book: ABM is B2B Why? It struck me as the kind of buzzword-laden, hype-filled, superficial-case-study-driven,
Branding
I first read The One to One Future by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers in 1997, four years after it was published. As a marketer, the book made a big impression on me. It was revolutionary stuff: we should make the paradigm shift from mass marketing to individualized marketing. When
Demandgen
Download USS_Nimitz_%28CVN-68%29_general_quarters_drill%2C_ca._2013.oga It’s that time of year, I suppose. You’ve hopefully approved your 2021 operating plan by now -- even if you’re on an increasingly popular 1/31 fiscal year end. You’ve signed up for some
Demandgen
Back in the day I was taught that marketers do three things, memorized via the acronym STP: segment, target, position. * Divide the audience into different segments. For example, dividing consumers by demographics or dividing businesses by size or industry. * Select the segments that the company wishes to target for its
Demandgen
There's a common debate out there, it goes something like this: "Our sales development representatives (SDRs) need to look for pain: finding business owners with a problem and the ability to get budget to go fix it." Versus: "No, our SDRs need to look for
Demandgen
In part I of this three-part series I introduced the idea of an inverted funnel whereby marketing can derive a required demand generation budget using the sales target and historical conversion rates. In order to focus on the funnel itself, I made the simplifying assumption that the company’s
Demandgen
As loyal readers know, I’m a reductionist, always trying to find the shortest, simplest way of saying things even if some degree of precision gets lost in the process and even if things end up more subtle than they initially appear. For example, my marketing mission statement of “makes
Demandgen
In the previous post, I introduced the idea of an inverted demand generation (demandgen) funnel which we can use to calculate a marketing demandgen budget based given a sales target, an average sales price (ASP), and a set of conversion rates along the funnel. This is a handy tool, isn&
Demandgen
Does my company spend too much on marketing? Too little? How I do know? What is the right level of marketing spend at an enterprise software startup? I get asked these questions all the time by startup CEOs, CMOs, marketing VPs, and marketing directors. You can turn to financial benchmarks,
Demandgen
Most startups today use some variation on the now fairly standard terms SAL (sales accepted lead) and SQL (sales qualified lead). Below see the classic [1] lead funnel model from marketing bellwether Sirius Decisions that defines this. One great thing about working as an independent board member and consultant is
Demandgen
I’m frankly shocked by how many startups treat pipeline as a monolith. Sample CMO: “we’re in great shape because we have a total pipeline of $32M covering a forward-four-quarter (F4Q) sales target of $10M, so 3.2x coverage. Next slide, please.” Regardless of your view on
Demandgen
I can’t tell you the number of times, as we were tearing down our booth after having had an epic show, that we overheard the guy next door calling back to corporate saying that the show was a “total waste of time” and that the company shouldn’t do