B2B Marketing

As organisations continue to widen their international footprint, marketing leaders are also being tasked with managing across complex matrix structures that have the added dimension of cross border marketing and virtual team management thrown in for good measure.

There seems surprisingly very little written on the subject considering this model seems quite prevalent in the modern day. The

The significance of the term ‘value' when considering marketing cannot be underestimated and signifies the association in the mind of the prospect organisation of the vendor's 'total marketing offering' against its cost and will most likely be compared to similar direct competitive offerings as well as some indirect offerings in the marketplace. The key term here is ‘total marketing offering' and

 When I was working in Enterprise Content Management space I can recall the proliferation of competitor offerings and didn't envy the poor organisational decision makers that had to go through a lengthy RFP and selection process to evaluate the most suitable vendor for their needs. If that wasn't and enough I remember how stressed the sales guys would get, burning the midnight oil answering a

I was reading an article recently about a B2B supplier who had been supplying parts for industrial engineers. They had been supplying their catalogue on CD-ROMs for years yet many engineers reported that they weren't using it, even though it was more up to date than the paper catalogue. When the B2B supplier asked why, they were unable to articulate the reasons. It was only after a research team

Much has been debated about the low level of customer brand loyalty in an age where the balance of power has shifted from the producer to the consumer. This has been largely due factors such as globalisation and the prevalence of the Internet. As I see it, customer satisfaction is like a ‘hygiene factor’. In itself it is probably not enough to build sustained customer lifetime value (i.e.

I just got through reading a book on SPIN® selling by Neil Rackham. It is not a new book and was first published back in 1987 and most sales people would have heard of it or at least be familiar with the recommendations. What particularly intrigued me was that it was research based, and evaluated 35,000 sales calls made by 10,000 sales people in 23 countries.

The book laid out an excellent

 

I have seen quite a few hit and miss lead scoring solutions in the B2B world.  Hot/Warm/Cold. ‘A' lead, ‘ B' lead, ‘C' leads and so on but whilst this type of categorization might well be appropriate for organisations who  just don't generate the quantity of leads to warrant time and attention for more sophisticated methods, such scoring solutions can become problematic due primarily for the

A few years ago I had a series of golf lessons and remember the instructor teaching me to do the exact reverse of what my intuition was telling me. Rather than attack at the ball as hard as I could he told me to loosen up and concentrate on the swing. It felt strange at first but the advice paid dividends as my accuracy and range improved significantly.

I witnessed a similar counter intuitive

 

B2B sales can be very complicated and protracted affairs and involve multiple points of touch at different stages. To add to the complexity, they can be with different organisational stakeholders at different points in the sales cycle.

As a marketer your job does not stop at the brand awareness  building stage but you should enter into a dialogue with your future customers well into close stages

A specific personal experience I had lives vividly in my mind and always brings a smile to my face, whenever I recall it. When I was posted overseas to Kazakhstan where I was responsible for sales and marketing of confectionery for a leading Western brand, I was invited to the home of our warehouse director for a feast called ‘datsarkhan'. The host brought out a sheep's head that had been boiled