If our potential customers are not in the center of that program, we have no hope at all at filling our funnels (or clouds). Two weeks ago I hosted participated in Focus.com's Demand Gen Freestyle (replay here) discussions. Focus.com makes the world's best business expertise available to everyone, and they often run roundtable discussions several times a week. Craig Rosenberg hosted the Demand Gen centered discussion, with a panel of Adam Needles of Left Brain Marketing , Cody Young of Reach Force , and Tom Searce of Searce Market Development and myself. It was a great discussion. MORE >>

Vendors can deliver their message themselves, or they can put customers or industry experts on stage to do it for them. Tips for earning respect as a vendor: Consider using industry experts and/or customers to present your message. I've recently been on the conference circuit, speaking and tweeting whatever sales and marketing goodness I can find. One topic that came up at each conference was the quality of the content presented by the various speakers. Some sessions were brilliant; some were nothing more than veiled commercials. Simple, right? Let's face it. Engage the audience. MORE >>

The iPhone 4 brings Apple customers a nicely improved design and several new features: the ability to make video phone calls, to record (and edit!) It's all about the evolution and use of technology -- I feel as if Apple values prospects and customers and wants to bring them value. Create tools, buzz and reasons for customers to bring you prospects. Not sure I'm going to pick up the new iPhone just yet. It's been a tried-and-true pattern the past 3 summers. HD videos and true multi-tasking, just to name a few. What this means to me (and you) is its connection to Sales 2.0. MORE >>

To top it off, the system also has an integrated chat/messaging system for visitors to use, as well as the ability to display an Instant Promo window that can contain custom messages. In the Smashmouth Review of Genius.com Part 1 , we focused on Genius Pro. Since then, we've had the opportunity to work with and evaluate Genius Enterprise. The one liner summary: marketing automation and sales enablement with a 2.0 twist. The product is so rich in features that this article alone will not do it justice. Genius eliminates the need for heavy IT support. Consider this example. sales genius MORE >>

Are you truly providing anything that will differentiate you from your competitors, over the thousands of other messages out there your customers are possibly engaging with?". There were some great B2B Demand Gen articles posted this week, and here are the handful that stood out for the Smashmouth crowd: Old Spice: The Man Your Content Could Smell Like - The big news this week was the Old Spice Man answering people's questions and Twitter updates with personalized responses. The originality of this type of content marketing is refreshing. What did we miss? MORE >>