This is laugh-out-loud funny. Especially love Kermit selling under pressure.
Nominal business observation: do you think this would work at your company’s meetings today? Many corporate executives want both the company’s and their own personal brands to have gravitas. The Muppets don’t bring gravitas to a brand, but they make it accessible.
More about brands, selling, and [...]

As I watch the Google Alerts pop up for my brand name, I am struck by two things.
1. Some affiliate marketing writers (who frankly sound half a step short of MLM’ers) have glommed onto the idea of invisible marketing being a terrible thing. Who wouldn’t want their name in lights?
2. Other marketing writers (who sound [...]

At one time, the demarcation between sales and marketing was simpler.
Relationships were what sales needed:

One to one, person to person,
company by target account company,
highly situational, mano a mano.

That’s the world of selling.
Markets are what marketing tried to influence.

Given enough time and money, you could drive statistically measurable movements of trends and beliefs through populations, groups, [...]

Process improvement is a sophisticated science (and art) in the real world where stuff gets moved (logistics), stored (materials management), built (JIT, Six Sigma, Lean, Agile), and so on.
Most marketing people don’t think about what they do in terms of process improvement.
These two disciplines should talk to each other.
If you’re a B2B [...]

You won’t find a foolproof, set-it-and-forget-it solution to marketing automation, salesforce automation, revenue generation. Make better processes by understanding the limits of process.

Amid seismic shifts in technology and the macro economy, at least 3 gaps are emerging between marketing leaders.

It’s probably data quality — labor intensive, behind the scenes stuff.
Good data is like jet fuel. The plane is beautiful and lovingly engineered, and it’s the part that the users actually see. But that gorgeously branded vehicle isn’t going anywhere without some liquid nourishment under the hood.
Kudos to by Ben Bradley at Macon [...]

CMOs, how do we make a difference when the available pool of paying customers has shrunk?
In a B2B company of not-unlimited means, it is easy to spend a lot of money on marketing without seeing value for the spend. Here are 4 spends that are limited, scalable, and accountable. Each can drive [...]