Posts Tagged ‘CMO’

Open Letter to Buyer-Enabled Organizations

December 20th, 2011

The last two posts, an “Open Letter to CMOs” and an “Open Letter to Buyers” have triggered a large number of pretty intense conversations about the frustrations that you’re feeling today around the disruptive impact social media is having on your markets.  It’s disruptive, not because of the technology, but because of the impact it’s having on your relationships with your buyers, their perceptions of your organization and their desire to want to begin or continue to do business with you.  The fear and the uncertainty that you’ve shared with me is not knowing what impact this disruption will ultimately have on your company’s reputation, revenue, market share, the quantity and quality of the relationships with your buyers, if you were to just continue down the same path you’re on today.

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Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to Buyers

November 7th, 2011

Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to BuyersWe owe you a mea culpa…. We’ve been seller driven, not buyer driven. We’ve focused on selling you what we think you need (what we sell) versus helping you make better decisions.  We haven’t helped you make the business case for why this is a significant problem.  We’ve automated our marketing systems to better reach you, but never asked if or what you’re interested in.  We’ve treated you as a company, not as a group of individuals with different needs, perspectives, and roles.  We don’t know what a “day in your life” looks like to give us context as to why you don’t have the time to sit through our “canned” presentation, educate us on your business, and sift through all of our market claims.

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Open Letter to CMO’s – Social Target Marketing for Complex Sales

September 26th, 2011

I’m not sure if you saw the “Open Letter to CMO’s” in the Social Executive Council.  The feedback we’ve received is that the post is helping to build your own business case to address the impact that social is having on the purchase behaviors in your industry, in particular those with a very complex buying/selling process.

With that in hand, many of you have now asked me to share our approach, to arm you, as the internal advocate, for the conversations you need to have within your organizations as to why social target marketing is more critical than ever.

At a high level, social target marketing is about how we can build better relationships with likely buyers to create new opportunities for our business that we’re missing out on today.

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Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to CMO’s

September 9th, 2011

It has been awhile since I wrote my last open letter to the SEC, but my goal with these is to summarize important trends that I see consistently across the executive members within the group in a way that helps highlight major strategic challenges. Continue reading “Recent Social Executive Council Post: Open Letter to CMO’s” »

The CMO’s Four Envelopes

May 18th, 2011

There is an old joke about CEOs, this is the CMO version…

A newly hired CMO arrives on the first day to find four numbered envelopes on the desk with a note that says “open in case of emergency” left by the last position holder. Bizarre, but soon forgotten in the hum of the first day and subsequently buried in the piles of stuff over the following months. Those months are a blur of activity, getting up to speed, assessing the team, evaluating the activities, working with the executive team, etc.

After a few more months, the honeymoon period wanes as things start to solidify and the CMO begins to feel the pressure to produce immediate results. Sales have been flagging, sales is complaining, the board is restless, and the CEO is less patient. The CMO remembers the envelopes and finds them buried under stacks of papers on the shelf.  Now, unsure that this point constitutes an emergency, but the CMO remembers the grilling in the last senior management meeting and thinks “now or never”. Upon opening, there is a single line, “Fire the Agency and Rebrand”.

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