The concept of the virtual event, long a notion prompting predictions and fears of live events’ demise, has achieved an ironic feat. Far from threatening the vitality and existence of traditional events, virtual events bolstered by social media have strengthened the appeal of in-person professional gatherings across all industries, and will soon be crucial to most brick-and-mortar trade shows.
Since it’s impossible to add another hour to the 24-hour day, I need an alternative. How can I find time to do all the things I need to complete at work? No doubt, many managers/supervisors deal with this challenge. How have you overcome the “I can’t get everything done” syndrome?
— Ed, Manager
At our company, most employees have Internet access at their workstations. Ordinarily, I don’t mind a few minutes of web browsing here and there for a break or even a little personal business. It’s the same as a quick water cooler conversation.
Yet as social media has grown and become a business necessity, more employees have started to hang out on these sites — and not always for work. Am I going overboard in wanting to control the amount of time employees spend online for personal surfing? How can I trust them to get the work done without curtailing this personal web browsing? Or does it really save productivity since they get the mental break they need?
— Nathan
After over five years of service, I recently “retired” from a company to manage my own business full-time. I gave the standard two-week notice and started preparing to help with the transition. The company cut my two weeks short, and my manager was disrespectful to me during the process.
Since then, I’ve been furious with the manager and the situation. I did the best I could to serve the company and was loyal and honest. Having never received closure, I’ve been careful because I don’t believe in burning bridges.
The company did nothing illegal, so this doesn’t call for a lawsuit. And I might need a good recommendation from my manager someday. I think some action will help me get over this, but what? Should I talk to the director or someone else? I’m still burning inside despite trying to forget about the company. Nothing works. How do you work past these nasty feelings?
— Gone, but not forgotten
Despite the Internet’s vast resources, people don’t always find what they need, especially when searching for obscure information or something that doesn’t yet exist. Consider an old song from your teen years that keeps playing in your mind. Maybe you only remember a few words, not phrases or lines. If you spend some time, you may find it buried in the information highway haystack.
The healthcare industry faces a unique challenge, finding ways to cut costs without affecting the quality of patient care. Sacrificing care means the difference between life and death. Furthermore, hospital decision-makers are so busy that they have built shells around them to protect their time and sanity.
This article takes you through the process of aligning sales and marketing in the lead flow process. It also identifies alignment problems and how to work through them to gain qualified leads and close the deal. And aligning marketing and sales is indeed a journey, not a destination.
What do you think of the article’s approach?
If you’ve been reading the articles we share on marketing and sales alignment, you understand why it’s important to get the two teams in sync. But how do you make it happen? What I like about this article is how it breaks down the five ways without overwhelming you. It’s not a long article.
What do you think of these five tasks?
Your LinkedIn account is not the same thing as having your company on LinkedIn. Take a look at Publisher Hank Stroll’s Linkedin account (http://www.linkedin.com/in/hankstroll). Now here’s his company’s page (http://www.linkedin.com/companies/internetviz). The article shares how you can make the most of your company’s LinkedIn page.
How do you use LinkedIn?
Here are 10 common mistakes that businesses, organizations and others make when starting social media. If you read our features, you know that the b2b companies that are successful in social media begin with strategy not creating an account.
What do you think is the most important factor for a b2b company’s success in social media?
Naturally, when thinking about our target market, we think of our customers’ problems and try to solve them. But what if you changed your thinking to focusing on solving your customer’s customer’s problems? No, that’s not a typo.
Let’s say Jim sells XYZ services. Jim is your customer. Imagine the impact you have on Jim if you help him solve HIS customers’ problems. Read Liz Strauss’ article to see how this impacts social media.
What do you use social media for in your B2B business?
The best person to do social media for a business is the people who work for the business. Social media is about connecting with people and putting a face on a company. However, outsourcing some tasks can help you and your staff learn from experienced users. After all, you need a strategy for social media before getting into it.
How do you feel about outsourcing social media marketing activities?
This article touts the importance of integrating sales and marketing. Many of us agree on this, but many of us don’t know how to make that happen or we tried and failed. Author Jeff Ogden goes so far to give real-life examples and how the companies went about solving problems. Ogden closes with five tips for integrating sales and marketing.
Here are the five tips:
1. Put your most respected executives on it along with outside help like Find New Customers.
2. Give them the full and vocal support of top leadership.
3. Provide them with time to uncover existing processes and challenges.
4. Support them to implement new processes.
5. Measure and test. Make sure the culture really changed.
How do you think applying the five tips will affect an organization?
Since it’s impossible to add another hour to the 24-hour day, I need an alternative. How can I find time to do all the things I need to complete at work? No doubt, many managers/supervisors deal with this challenge. How have you overcome the “I can’t get everything done” syndrome?
— Ed, Manager
Mac McIntosh interviews Elizabeth Vanneste, CMO of Miller Heiman, with a focus on aligning sales and marketing. What does it mean to align sales and marketing? Vanneste clearly defines what it means to align the two and references a study that shows the effectiveness of aligning the two.
I’ve always believe in the importance of sales and marketing collaboration. What are some ways you can get the two to collaborate for the good of the company?
Since then, I’ve been furious with the manager and the situation. I did the best I could to serve the company and was loyal and honest. Having never received closure, I’ve been careful because I don’t believe in burning bridges.
The company did nothing illegal, so this doesn’t call for a lawsuit. And I might need a good recommendation from my manager someday. I think some action will help me get over this, but what? Should I talk to the director or someone else? I’m still burning inside despite trying to forget about the company. Nothing works. How do you work past these nasty feelings?
In my 20 years in the workforce, it’s surprising that performance reviews haven’t made a difference for my staff. I’m trying to turn this around, so I’ve read up on how to make the most of performance reviews. Yet, I struggle with finding an effective process that benefits the employee, employer and manager.
Do you use the performance review tool or do you do your own thing? What’s the best way to do a constructive performance review that benefits both employees and management?
— Perplexed about performance
This list of marketing lessons comes from the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. You’ll find tips for keywords, content, email marketing, social media, sales.
What’s one marketing lesson you’ve learned recently?
How do you present your lead generation effort? Do you sell by convincing customers they need your product or service? Or do you find out what customers need? Several companies share their successful lead generation processes and how they balance the various mediums.
What works for you in generating leads?
You have plenty of success stories you can use to show that social media really works for b2b. You may need more to convince the upper echelons to move into social media. The article provides suggestions from five people of varying backgrounds to help you get to “YES!”
What other ways can you get buy in from the top?
Some marketers think using social media means simply repackaging the company’s brochure-type content as thought leadership. This won’t work. Smart marketers have taken notice of the five shifts and applied them to increase sales. They all revolve around giving the buyer more power and control. Furthermore, social media is an integrated effort. A new client that connected with you on Twitter didn’t necessarily find you on Twitter — it’s about mixing up how you engage with others.
What do you think of the five shifts?
Bring together the devil in Reaper, a smarmy guy from The Usual Suspects and a large enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, and you have a business-to-business company that knows how to have fun while teaching. It’s part of the learn, laugh, share and connect philosophy that the supply-chain management company Kinaxis applies to social media.
We have a decent team, but we can’t make things happen smoothly. My boss assigns irrelevant tasks to my team. We put in a lot of overtime because of his idiocy. The guy is a joke around the department, and everyone except the executive team seems to know that. Should we confront the executive director, go to the CEO (the director’s boss) or live with it in silence?
— Tracy, Manager
As if sales and marketing didn’t have enough to divide the two, marketing-leaning social media adds to the friction. It is possible to bring together b2b social media and b2b sales. This article lists four ways to apply what b2b sales already uses and tie it with social media.
We also posted reader advice on how to help sales with social media.
How would you bridge the gap between social media and sales?
Many of us agree that social media is a great venue for listening and interacting with customers, colleagues, experts and more. But some people in marketing remain stuck in traditional marketing and need help to integrate social media rather than look at it as dichotomy.
What can we do to help marketing become more integrated instead of siloed?
Social media marketing grew massively in a short time. Where else can you directly engage with customers and colleagues? The infographic in this article will show you the gaps that you can fill now and get ahead of your competitors. Forrester says that social media marketing is growing at double the rate of all other forms of online marketing. Should marketers ignore social media with these kind of numbers?
What does your business plan to do in terms of marketing in the next four years?
This article discusses five questions that many b2bs will ask when looking into social media. The questions cover who should manage social media, whether social media is personal or business, social media’s ROI, finding time to do social media and whether b2b customers really use social media. Even if very few of your customers use it, social media is worth exploring, discovering and understanding. Don’t wait until something happens that pushes you into it. Be ready.
What are your biggest social media questions?
In my 20 years in the workforce, it’s surprising that performance reviews haven’t made a difference for my staff. I’m trying to turn this around, so I’ve read up on how to make the most of performance reviews. Yet, I struggle with finding an effective process that benefits the employee, employer and manager.
Do you use the performance review tool or do you do your own thing? What’s the best way to do a constructive performance review that benefits both employees and management?
— Perplexed about performance
We have a decent team, but we can’t make things happen smoothly. Our boss assigns irrelevant tasks to our team. We put in a lot of overtime because of his idiocy. The guy is a joke around the department, and everyone except the executive team seems to know that. Should we confront the executive director, go to the CEO (the director’s boss) or live with it in silence?– Judy, Project Manager
Effective business-to-business (B2B) social media is not just the latest “pretty face” in public relations (PR). It’s also transformational technology with potential to help company departments work better together — operating in a united yet decentralized environment. Social media provides each area of the company with the power to interact with the outside world.
My company hired me as its first marketing executive. I have a designer and a copywriter who have been here for years. We work together well.
My sales counterpart and I also got along GREAT at first, until I suggested interviewing the sales team to better understand how their customers might react to a social media initiative. Since then, she has found excuse after excuse for me not to speak with them, and our relationship is a bit strained. Is there a way to fix this relationship, or should I try another approach to reach sales?
— Flailing in sales
