IT Buying Process © All rights reserved by Kenny Madden
This is part 1 of a limited series on why buyer choice modeling is the new view B2B Business must adopt to improve revenue performance and develop long lasting relationships with buyers.
Finding the keys that unlock improving revenue performance and achieving growth is becoming harder and harder as we go from a single buyer model to...
Image via Wikipedia
The good news is that CMO tenure continues to rise. Spencer Stuart, the executive search consulting firm, in their study released early last year reported that average tenure rose to 42 months. Up from 35 months two years ago and up from 27 months in 2007. The bad news is that the CMO position still churns and...
Many B2B Marketers today are faced with the daunting tasks of connecting with buyers in new ways and using new mediums that are still in infancy. New tactical approaches have been introduced at a rapid rate and some old ideas repurposed with new labels – all in an effort to find the ever flowing fountain of gaining buyer attention. The shelf-life expectancy of some of the new approaches is yet to be known; making investment and resource decisions for leaders in B2B Marketing a road filled with risks. For many of these new approaches, the foundation of thinking is still directed towards the single buyer model that has been the standard way of thinking for several decades.
Evidence is building that the standardized focus on a single buyer model has major disadvantages: depictions have lacked in the reality of the real world today, they are narrowly focused on messaging to one buyer or role, it is an over simplification of marketing and selling to a...
Image via Wikipedia
In my most recent article, Boost Demand Generation Using Target Ready Buyer Models, a comment was posted by the ever thoughtful Eric Wittlake, author of the blog B2B Digital...
Recently, I published two articles related to 5 ways buyer behaviors are affecting B2B sales, and 5 ways they are affecting B2B marketing. Without question, changing buyer behaviors are also impacting how we think about Demand Generation or as it has been conventionally called – lead generation. Contrary to hyped notions of sales going away to wither in the desert – lead generation and the new label of demand generation are more important today than ever.
What needs to change you might ask? An easy answer is to say plenty. The complicated answer is to say that the mindset towards demand...
Image via Wikipedia
I would not be surprised today if a group of B2B executives said they were using fortune tellers to peer into a crystal ball to make predictions about the future. The fast pace of change makes the crystal ball of how buyers will behave in the future enveloped in a hazy fog. C-Suites are under enormous pressures to get it right the first time with regards to marketing and sales planning.
The ability to make decisions based on predictions is becoming an...
In the business-to-business world, the quest to connect with decision-makers has been and most likely will continue to be the main challenge confronting B2B leaders. Meeting this challenge successfully is the essential lifeblood of survival for many B2B companies. While today’s continuing convergence of the Internet, social technologies, and Enterprise 2.0 platforms are increasing B2B visibility like never before, connecting with buyers and decision-makers is becoming increasingly elusive.
In the world of B2B management, there are numerous head scratching efforts going on as we peer ahead into 2012 and beyond. Primarily, it has to do with how to get from here to there. One of the issues faced by B2B companies with the high degree of uncertainty, global economic turbulence, and a rapidly changing buyer driven and social world is figuring out where the from here to there actually leads to.
Recent buyer and management interviews tell me a lot of head scratching continues to go on. Plenty of internal angst and debate is taking place on how to get from here to there, what is needed, what should be done, and what a lot of people think. The what to do aspects of...
For many in B2B sales, from senior leaders to sales representatives, it may be a discouraging time. If you follow conventional and social media closely, the storied demise of sales has been told many times. You probably could buy a few lunches if you collected a dollar for every time you heard that buyers are in control and don’t need sales. To you, this sentiment seems like it is taking on mythical proportions. I am not so sure. If I ask myself three simple questions, I think my answers are...
Asking good questions was seared into my mental consciousness by several mentors early in my career. This notion was further influenced by prodigious reading of Peter Drucker. The premise being that good questions help you to focus and to get to the heart of what matters most. Here’s what I’ve learned over the years: it is hard to do and it takes practice! As I think about the future for B2B Marketers, these questions ring the loudest:
Who Are Our Customers?
We are undergoing the most significant changes in buyer behaviors in several...
