So do all our prospects and customers. We all use Twitter. made that argument to our CFO and CEO the other day and was met with a rousing chorus of guffaws and comments about teenagers and people with too much time on their hands. But it turns out, that is the critical importance of Twitter, we are all users, just not in the way you might think. First, let’s look at how Twitter is used by those who use it directly. To be honest, the main users (in my limited sampling) seem to be lots of journalists, PR people, Twitteratti, and bloggers. MORE >>

Whereas the classic role of marketing (as described by Peter Drucker), to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits them and sells itself, has not changed, the techniques for doing that in a B2B scenario are different from those used in a B2C scenario. What exactly defines Business to Business (B2B) Marketing? It’s an interesting question, as marketing is a discipline that is common across both business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) organizations. It’s worth exploring what B2B marketing entails. MORE >>

added my own thoughts about the teeter-totter of customer data management a month later. All too often, we live with some cognitive dissonance , in that, when we talk about the quality of our customer data, or when we manually inspect a handful of records, we quickly realize that much of the data is old or incomplete. In other words, contact data management is about being customer-centric first, which will lead to improvements in your lead qualification process, which will improve the handoff of leads to Sales, which will lead to higher revenue.and a good night's sleep! MORE >>

This can wreak havoc on businesses that focus heavily on selling at all costs, as it allows customers to only purchase what is truly going to fit their business, and avoid surprises after the sale. However, customer satisfaction among educated buyers is generally much higher as they avoided these post-sale surprises and bought solutions that were well fit to their needs. Customer satisfaction makes more sense the more your business is dependent on retention. There are a few trends in the industry that are worth commenting on in that they relate in a very interesting way. MORE >>

Frank Eliason from Comcast, Tony Hsieh from Zappos, and their teams, as well as a number of other great examples are shown as the “new way” of providing customer service. I don’t think I’ve been to a conference lately that didn’t have a mention of Twitter and its effect on service teams everywhere. don’t disagree, but the challenge here is that this must cause a massive shake-up of budgets and the way that organizations are structured if it is to succeed – and that is not a topic that is discussed in any significance. Let’s look at the math. Where will this budget come from? MORE >>