For now, let me just say that a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of the business when its fundamentals are about to change. They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may be insufficient. – …
The first step in developing a Propinquity Marketing Strategy is defining your key Propinquity Points. The technique varies by category, industry and prospect but here is a repeatable four-step process that can serve as your starting point. It’s the same process I use with my clients and we find it to be an excellent jumping off …
I spend Chapter 5 of my new book, The Invisible Sale, discussing the strategic shift content marketing oriented sales & marketing teams must accept to find and win the invisible buyer. Today’s buyers are looking for advice not advertising and the brands that figure that out and successfully deploy that strategy first will enjoy enormous first mover …
According to a 2012 Edison Research Study on the Podcast Listener awareness of podcasting has grown 105% since 2006 and the percentage of people indicating they have listened to an audio podcast has grown 163%. But access to a growing audience isn’t the only reason to consider adding podcasting to your social selling toolkit. Here are three key …
You know what’s wrong with experts? They don’t know what they don’t know…. and they’re scared to find out. Experts abhor failure. They can’t help themselves. If you or I fail at something, it’s a setback. But if an expert fails, it’s a massive chink in their expert armor. And with each and every failure, they …
I love how my funnel optimized website helps invisible buyers become visible sales leads. This site, which was created by Copyblogger Media is built on the Genesis WordPress platform using a customized Streamline child theme. To enhance the site’s ability to power my social selling efforts, and serve as a never need a vacation painless …
The one thing almost all successful blogs have in common is a commitment to publishing regularly. But as anyone who creates content marketing will tell you, sometimes the words are there and others, well they just don’t come to you. Instead, you get the dreaded, writer’s block. But the schedule demands that you publish something, …
Every day I talk to sales and marketing executives that lament their inability to convince their company to adopt social selling, inbound marketing and content marketing strategies and tactics. In fact I’ve gotten this question so many times that today I want to share with you the advice I give each of them. It’s a …
Studies show that self-educating buyers regularly download white papers and eBooks as part of their pre-purchase research. They’ll gladly trade an email address for good information that helps them make a buying decision or just makes them smarter. But far too many companies today are making a huge mistake with their white papers and ebooks. …
Edison Research just released another great study — Moms and Media 2013. There is a ton of good information in the report including key statistics showing that moms are increasingly digital, social and mobile. And as they adopt smartphones, all three of those variables increase in importance. The Social Mom According to Edison, 93% of …
I love the creative freedom that my iPhone provides. And nowhere is that freedom better expressed than in photography. I’m sure you’re quite familiar with Instagram and the creative filters that go with it, but if you really want to “go pro” with your mobile photography, grab these five iPhone apps — and find plenty …
Three years and two weeks ago I called my wife to tell her I would become unemployed on May 1, 2010. I had accomplished my three year goal at the agency I was working at and it was time to move on to a new challenge — namely to return to a life of leisure …
I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally be able to tell everyone this incredible news — my first social selling book, The Invisible Sale is finally available on Amazon and B&N. A recent BtoB Magazine survey of US B2B marketers found that in 2013, 60% of respondents cited generating more leads remained their top challenge. And …
Lately I’ve been getting a lot more requests from to conduct LinkedIn Networking Workshops for B2B sales teams. It seems companies and organizations are finally waking up to the fact that LinkedIn is so much more than an online resume collection. At the same time I’m seeing an uptick in really bad LinkedIn networking attempts. …
This post is a reprint of a post I wrote after returning from my first overseas trip in 2010 to Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, where I conducted a series of social media workshops. If you want to read the entire series (this is the third and final post) I’ve included links to view the original …
Ever have a salesperson claim they don’t have time to play on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+? If you answer no, then you’re either a liar or not listening closely because it’s the most common thing social media consultants have been hearing from sales organizations for as long as social media has been around. And …
Hashtags were ‘invented’ as a way for a group of people to follow a single conversation on Twitter. If you’ve ever seen a tweet with # preceding a word, you’ve seen a Hashtag. One of the greatest uses of Hashtags is to create real-time, ad hoc chat rooms called Tweet Chats or Twitter Chats. These …
The single most important thing to think about when crafting your website or blog — is not how beautiful it is but how well it functions as a lead generation machine. Probably the single biggest mistake companies and people make when crafting a website is that they focus entirely too much on the physical beauty …
[fve]http://youtu.be/7tciDDwJICA[/fve] YouTube is the second most searched website in the world but one of the biggest challenges that most folks have is converting that viral video into website or blog traffic. It would be a lot easier if YouTube just let you embed links to your blog or website in the actual video. But alas, …
If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me, “How do I sell on Twitter?” or “Can you really use Facebook for B2B sales prospecting?” or the big question lately, “How can my sales people prospect better with LinkedIn?” I’d spend a whole lot more time with my kids and my handicap would …
Since the mid-2000’s, full-service ad agencies have been vacillating between keeping a wary eye on their new digital agency brethren and full sprints to catch up and surpass them. Why? Because research like the 2013 RSW/US Agency-Marketer Business Report showed (and continues to show) that clients intend to keep shifting more dollars to digital marketing and social …
In sales organizations around the globe sales & marketing executives are debating the merits of inbound marketing versus outbound marketing B2B approaches. Unfortunately, many of the discussions are akin to hardcore democrats versus republicans with each side trying to paint the issue in black and white. While I wish it was that simple, it’s not. …
The single most important thing any professional service organization can do to ensure it’s long term existence is to create and maintain a systematic, ongoing business development and lead generation machine. New prospects are the lifeblood of every business and a steady flow of them will ensure your continued existence. To learn how you can do …
Is your company using blogger outreach to help spread your marketing messages online? It seems many brands today are looking for a better way to build blogger relations campaigns but still struggle. So today I want to show you a short-cut to reaching even the biggest bloggers. The Biggest Blogger Outreach Challenges To be fair, some …
Unfortunately too many companies most often reward digital marketing agencies for our execution of campaigns. But at our core, agencies are thinkers and our greatest value to clients is our ability to think not execute. But it seems like not a week goes by that I’m not involved in a conversation with a colleague, prospect …
Research from Google shows that now more than ever, Woody Allen was right – Showing Up is 80% of social selling success. Today’s self educating B to B buyer is increasingly turning to sources other than salespeople for information. Number Of Sources Buyers Consult Google’s ZMOT Research, released in 2011 revealed that consumer shoppers consult …
[fve]http://youtu.be/xVfR4TeGuTk[/fve] We recently redesigned our website to make it more funnel optimized and upgraded it to a responsive design website so it would render on smartphones. But this created one big problem – our videos didn’t resize with the rest of the site on mobile. To fix that we had to either invest in additional …
In an age of Internet connected televisions and broadband powered tablets and smartphones, has the television industry finally lost it’s grip on its coveted lock on the creation and distribution of unique serialized video content? Is The Web Poised To Become The 5th Network? Back in the 90’s a new kid joined the block as …
Hang on boys and girls, there’s a new buzzword in town — Native Advertising. Are you familiar with the term? If not, don’t worry. According to our survey fielded yesterday via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ you’re not alone. In fact, based on our results, I think it is safe to say we can all …
Every year we see the same “Biggest Trends for XXXX Year” for marketing, technology, and especially social media. In 2011, I interviewed 52 social media thought leaders to see what they thought was “NEXT”. So, as 2012 has closed, let’s see how accurate they were. Social Media Predictions for 2012 I went back through all …