10 Ways Machine Learning Is Revolutionizing Marketing
84% of marketing organizations are implementing or expanding AI and machine learning in 2018. 75% of enterprises using AI and machine learning enhance customer satisfaction by more than 10%. 3 in 4 organizations implementing AI and machine learning increase sales of new products and services by more than 10% according to Capgemini. Measuring marketing’s many contributions […]
How to Walk From a Deal
Like it or not, once in a while it’s appropriate for a vendor to walk away from a prospective deal. Why might you want to do that? You think your product is a poor fit with the customer’s needs. You believe there is insufficient budget to achieve success on the project. You feel like the […]
Using Time-Based Close Rates to Align Marketing Budgets with Sales Targets
This post builds on my prior post Win Rates, Close Rates, and Milestone vs. Flow Analysis. In it, I will take the ideas in that post, expand on them a bit, and then apply them to difficult problem of ensuring you have enough marketing demand generation budget to hit your sales targets. Let’s pretend it’s […]
Win Rates, Close Rates and Milestone vs. Flow Analysis
Hey, what’s your win rate? It’s another seemingly simple question. But, like most SaaS metrics, when you dig deeper you find it’s not. In this post we’ll take a look at how to calculate win rates and use win rates to introduce the broader concept of milestone vs. flow analysis that applies to conversion rates […]
Just Effing Demo
We do pretty extensive win/loss reporting at Host, and I remember one time reading a loss report that went something like this. “We were interested in buying Host and it made our short list. When we invited you in for a demo with our team and the CFO, things went wrong. After 20 minutes, your […]
Don’t Let Product Management Turn Into “The Roadmap Guys”
At many enterprise software companies product management (PM) ends up defaulting into a role that I can’t stand: The Roadmap Guys*. Like a restaurant with one item on the menu, the company defaults into ordering one thing from product management: a roadmap pitch. “The VP of PM is in Boston and Providence this week, can […]
What Top CMO’s Care About (Demand Gen Persona) – Part 1 of 4
Top Trends for 2018 Highlight Greater Orchestration In March 2016, Constellation introduced four personas of the modern CMO (see Figure 1). This framework provided CMO’s with a model to think about the role of strategy versus execution and audience development versus audience acquisition. Over the past eight weeks, conversations with demand generation focused […]
Dear Marketing: Stop Putting the Template Over the Story
I’ve always thought that if marketers wrote newspapers, the famous New York Times headline of August 8, 1974 would have looked like this: Instead of how it actually looked, which was: What’s the difference? While both of the above presentations are structured, the newspaper doesn’t let the template get in the way of story. The […]
How To Get Your Startup a Halo
How would you like your startup to win deals not only when you win a customer evaluation, but when you tie — and even sometimes when you lose? That sounds great. But is it even possible? Amazing, yes — but you need have a halo effect working to your advantage. What is a halo effect? Per […]
Start With an Audience Not a Product If You Want to Win
Find your Audience first… Many Entrepreneurs identify too much with their product or idea. They want to go from a product idea to a plan for success. But that’s not the best way and if you insist on following that approach, it can often lead into a long blind alley. Here’s a question I saw […]
