Wow, I had no idea how many personal “thank yous” I would get on my last post on Adam Needles book.  It just proves that b2b marketing is hard to learn and people are craving recommendations.  So, people asked me for a couple more recommendations.  We just moved to a new office, so I pulled out my box of books here at work.  There are probably more in my home shelf so anticipate another “5 more books for the aspiring Funnelholic” post in a couple weeks. I am both a sales and marketing guy, so the books cross both boundaries AND I believe sales and marketing should read them all (remember sales and marketing alignment!).  Here I go:

1. Content Rules by Ann Handley and CC Chapman — Great stuff and written in fun, engaging way.  I honestly didn’t think I would like it, but ended up REALLY liking it.  Content marketing is “the joint” right now, and this book helps understand it and provide tangible actions to take right now.

2.  Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy — It was my first book and I have kept it close by.  He was one of the original masters and there is so much to learn in there. Another fun read that takes you one day at the beach to get through.

3.  Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore — It is cliche to even include it on my list, but I had to.  If you are in b2b technology — you have to read it. Period.

4.  Sales Mastery A Novel by Barry Trailer — Ready for this: First interview out of college, I find a dude who was in my fraternity who was a VP at Oracle.  I go in to see him.  10 minutes in he says: “Ok, get a better suit because what you have on is terrible and read this book”.  He handed me Sales Mastery.  The book is cool because it is a fictional story with important points about complex selling. My first sales book!! Count it!

5.  The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino — It was a recommendation from my buddy Lars Nilsson.  I bought it, looked at the ancient storyline and put it on my shelf for 10 years.  I just read it and now I get it.  Inspiring and important is how I would describe it -read it.

Note: I have no commercial relationship with these people.

I never do book reviews, but it is interesting how many times I get asked: “What should I be reading about b2b marketing?”    That is why I am writing today about Adam Needles’ book: Balancing the Demand Equation - it is worth passing along to everyone.

Asterisks:

1.  Adam Needles is a friend but we have no commercial relationships with each other.

2.  Would I write a frivolous blog post supporting  friend’s work? No, not really. I really enjoyed it and decided to write about it, but am definetly a little uncomfortable because I don’t really shill. (some people may disagree, but I don’t)

Truthfully, there aren’t very many books out there for b2b marketing or b2b demand generation. I always and will continue to recommend Ardath Albee (I am an unabashed reader of all-things Albee), Jill Konrath (easy to read and fun) and Digital Body Language (not easy to read but a pre-cursor to the Adam’s book in many ways).  Basically,  I have been taking BART into work which means I get to read, and I really dug into Adam’s book.  I am writing because I like it AND I think it’s important.  Why?  It’s a study in the creating a demand generation platform. No, not just technology, but a organizational process that delivers an  always-on, highly efficient, highly effective b2b demand generation platform.

He uses a lot of data points, something that a lot of us in the blogosphere DON’T do (me included).  That helps keep me interested.  If what I am reading is just another one of us shouting about the buyer changing than I am not interested, but providing unique data points I like and this book does a good job of providing that.  There are some real-world examples - another piece lacking in a lot of the b2b marketing blogosphere’s writing (me included) is examples.  There are examples in here written from the view point of the practitioner.  I enjoyed that, and frankly, wish Adam provided more.

The quote at the top of the post is from the book and I loved it.  So there you have it, add another one to your list.

I now start every blog post with “it’s been awhile”. I apologize to anyone who cares, but I had twins (yeah!), and I have been slammed with work at Focus.com. I was inspired to write by my co-worker Lauren Harper’s awesome post on community management — massive props to Lauren. Also, I have been back in the trenches so I am back to picking up real world tips and best practices that work or don’t work. I have been jotting down my ideas and have been waiting to blog on each individual point, but I am just going to bundle them up once in awhile instead.

Tips are below:

Use account-based marketing when selling and marketing expensive, enterprise class products – I participated in a roundtable with Lauren Goldstein, Lisa Horner, and Ardath Albee on b2b demand generation,  you can listen to the roundtable here.  There were a lot of great tips to the event, but here is one I locked in on:  For enterprise class demand generation, ie. demand generation focused on big ticket, 6-7 figure sales, Lauren suggested creating content campaigns tailored specifically for each individual accounts. If you are going to make a million bucks on the client, isn’t it worth it? We talk a lot about relevancy and how that rises you above the noise.  Well, tailoring your content for that big whale client is a prime example of uber-relevancy and I think an absolutely great idea.

To read about account-based marketing directly from Lauren, click here
For an example, read this about what her team did with Nuance

Be specific in your content – one thing the content explosion has created has been a lot of writing and talking about concept(s).  These  concepts are re-hashed over and over. In the marketing blogosphere EVERYONE is saying the same thing.  Does this sound familiar:  “The buyer has changed, they don’t come to you…lodi dodi, we like to party”.  Don’t get my wrong, I understand the change in buying behavior but a lot of us just want to get on with it and go tear it up.  So here is the deal: The way you create compelling content is today’s chaotic world of “blowhard-ism” is to offer up real-world, specific examples of how ideas are being executed. Here are some simple rules that I am trying to apply to my content:

1. Produce tangible, “ready to use” tips and best practices in your content (blog posts, white papers, webinars).  Example: see above

2. Back up your tips and best practices with real applications and examples. Example: see below

Here is an example of a blog post that has real tips and real data to back it up:  Jon Miller’s My Secret Methods for Turning Marketing Leads into Qualified Sales Leads. It is a valuable guide with real-world examples.  The examples are not just for credibility but help the reader visualize and understand what they need to go do.

Hope you enjoy.

Note to self: This is my first post on Revenue Performance Management (RPM) (and my first post in awhile).

Usually, when I write, I can just sit down and crank out a post. For whatever reason, organizing my feelings on RPM has been hard. That changed, after I sat on a panel on Revenue Performance Management (RPM) at Dreamforce with Bill Binch from Marketo and Jamie Mallinger from Athena Health. It was really a great presentation (embedded below) and by the way, I DON’T mean my part – I mean Jamie and Bill’s. We actually did it twice to packed houses which was fun and exhilarating, but the main reason I mention the preso: it helped me get my hands around some of my feelings on the topic. I was all over the place with RPM, and when I got to work with Jamie and Bill, I was able to simplify everything in my mind. That is not to say executing is simple, but wrapping your hands around the concept is easier for me and maybe I can help here

Funnelholic Definition:
Revenue Performance Management - a process for managing, tracking and optimizing revenue from “start-to-finish”. The start could be awareness and the finish could be cross-sells/up-sells depending on your business model.

4 major, but simple building blocks to RPM:
1. A picture - You have mapped a cohesive step-by-step “demand chain” ala a supply chain that is mapped from interest (marketing) to well past close (sales). Each step of the way has a defined business rule to advance to the next step. Everyone agrees to this picture aka process.
2. Better leads — You will send sales leads that they agree to accept and convert. (Fail on this, and you are cooked. Sorry). If they work, you will send more. If they don’t, you understand where everything is developed now that you have a solid picture of the process so you figure out how to fix it. “Better leads” sounds tactical but part of what you build when you build the demand chain is process such as scoring, nurturing, and inside sales/sales development to ensure that sales is working on qualified leads.
3. Metrics — You have metrics that map to your steps of your “demand chain” that you can tune to drive revenue.
4. Someone or some entity to look at everything and help make decisions – That is complicated and a whole ‘nother blog post but you either need a Chief Revenue Office/Officer or someone close to the CEO/President who can call out what is happening and help drive better decision-making

Impediments to Success:

1. Politics – plain and simple. Do you know how many people came up to me with the comment “this is great but there is no way I can get this done because of the people involved”. There has to be a commitment from the key stakeholders in the organization that they want to do this.
2. Politics Part II, the sales leader – Truthfully, sales doesn’t care about sales and marketing alignment nor are they very interested in a movement that usurps their power. Keep this in mind as we start to head down this road. This movement is being driven by marketing and in particular, RPM vendors (formerly known as marketing automation vendors). Again, if you have been in a b2b marketing organization, then you know the guy who rules the roost is an 800 pound gorilla named the head of sales.
3. There is more to revenue than demand gen and sales – Product, service and all those factors play into revenue success. I realize that. But for now, it’s a BIG step to merge the sales and marketing process and let’s just start with that.

Politics can be a mess here, and I wonder aloud whether for the near-term solution is drop the “management” part of RPM and for now, call it RPM – Revenue Performance Mentality. The most important thing to do here is to educate and get organizations on board from a mentality perspective. Then everything else will come into place including technology.(first mention) Realizing there are still some flaws, can you really say that from an organizational standpoint that you wouldn’t want a fully optimized, predictable revenue machine?

Let me go over the benefits:

1. Predictability – the well-oiled Revenue Performance Machine knows when they put more “in the top” what will come out the “bottom”. That is empowering for an organization.
2. Optimization – the ability to really fix holes is one of my favorite part of having visibility into the entire revenue process. Instead of saying “close more f-in business” to sales or “get me more leads” to marketing, we can objectively look at the breakdown and make good decisions that truly effect revenue downstream.
3. More money

The “demand chain” is the last part of the b2b organization that has yet to be streamlined and optimized. Manufacturing companies understand their supply chain from materials to delivery in stores. Why can’t we do the same for demand?

PS Steve Gershik — I didn’t say marketing automation except to reference vendors.  I don’t think i have to drink.

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