Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Survey internal sales and marketing staff, customers, target markets, and influencers to determine what they are looking for. If those pieces are missing, thought leadership will be left to marketing, where it will either mutate into thinly veiled sales content or die out altogether. Get agreement with sales on a sales-ready lead.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing Paper 100

Chris Koch

AUGUST 21, 2009

Survey internal sales and marketing staff, customers, target markets, and influencers to determine what they are looking for. If those pieces are missing, thought leadership will be left to marketing, where it will either mutate into thinly veiled sales content or die out altogether. Get agreement with sales on a sales-ready lead.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Network Marketing B2B Sales 100

Chris Koch

MAY 1, 2009

Right now, it seems that the gap between sales and marketing is mostly papered over with technology. For example, the trend towards creating a closed-loop lead generation and nurturing process between marketing and sales is a positive step, but it seems like a bridge across the chasm rather than a true route to collaboration.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Cross-Selling B2B Sales Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

Women hold a strong place in Iroquois society, leading individual clans within tribes, helping determine chiefs, and holding veto power over treaties and declarations of war (the Iroquois declared war on Germany in both world wars). They don’t want three different calls from three different sales areas of your company.

De-duplication 100

De-duplication Paid Search Agency Companies Wikipedia 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 18, 2011

Now, you may think that because I’m using revenue and thought leadership together in the same sentence that I’m going to reveal some secret way to measure the link between the white paper you published last month and the complex solution sale you make six months from now. Use ideas to attract and nurture leads.

Work Management 100

Work Management Thought Leadership Marketing Management Paper 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 15, 2010

Could have been bibles or vacuum cleaners, but they didn’t need sales guys for that stuff anymore. Marketers today are in the same position I was with that sales guy in 1995: Wondering how to explain the value and difficulty of creating clear, compelling content about a complex subject. This guy was a salesman. What am I paying for?

Social Media 100

Social Media Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 22, 2010

I wish I could say that social media leads to sales. We need to believe that more engagement between our companies and the people we want to reach is a good thing that ultimately leads to sales—but down a long, narrow, winding path with a few jumps between cliffs thrown in there. I really do. But I can’t.

Social Media 100

Social Media ROI Lead Ranking RSS 100

Chris Koch

JANUARY 8, 2010

Marketing and sales need to agree on the alignment of content to the different buying stages so that sales will get the right signals about when and how to approach customers for a sale. Integrate the internal learning network and content processes with social media. If learning is the objective, the rest falls into place.

Social Media 100

Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Thought Leadership Media 100

Chris Koch

JULY 10, 2009

We’re starting to see social media have a positive impact on driving traffic to websites and on lead generation. Increased lead generation” was farther down the list—24% are seeing it. Social media and lead generation go together. But there is a natural link between social media and lead generation. In our recent Web 2.0

Web 2.0 100

Web 2.0 B2B Thought Leadership Ideal Customer Profiles Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

One of the great trends were seeing at ITSMA is increased automation of the lead process. It’s great because the software acts as a battering ram for alignment between marketing and sales. That metric is going to be critically important as we automate the lead process because nurturing is marketing’s special sauce.

Planning 100

Planning B2B Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 6, 2009

One of the great trends were seeing at ITSMA is increased automation of the lead process. It’s great because the software acts as a battering ram for alignment between marketing and sales. That metric is going to be critically important as we automate the lead process because nurturing is marketing’s special sauce.

B2B Thought Leadership 100

B2B Thought Leadership Planning Thought Leadership Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

MARCH 5, 2010

And they both lead to content that benefits from being mobile. One company’s mobile application is tied to a wiki-based sales enablement website that lets salespeople generate actions and updates and get updated information from the road. We’re seeing mobile be part of an integrated approach to social media, not as a standalone.

Wiki 100

Wiki Urgency Marketing Mobile Marketing Content 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

B2B marketing lays the path to a sales discussion and supports relationships with existing customers. It’s tempting to say that because B2B sales are highly dependent on relationships, social media will eventually reign supreme. The trust leads to a more personal relationship and hopefully, a purchase.

Social Media 100

Social Media Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

APRIL 3, 2014

Sales of family season ticket plans increased from fewer than 500 in 2009 to more than 7,500 in 2012. Fantasy league members generally view about seven times more content – text, video, and data – on NFL.com than non-fantasy users. . “A

Planning 100

Planning Paid Search Agency Work Management Marketing & Strategy 100

Chris Koch

NOVEMBER 7, 2012

But the Forbes platform is an important step in helping companies understand that there is a time for selling but there is also a time (generally much earlier in the sales process) when customers and prospects are simply looking to be informed, educated and entertained. Where I’d Like To Be 10 Years From Now. Why Forbes.

Disintermediation 100

Disintermediation B2B Marketing Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 100

Chris Koch

JUNE 5, 2009

For example, when Oracle was found to have overstated its revenues in 1991, it removed its head of finance and brought in a new CFO, who announced that the company was changing its sales practices. The company took a different approach with customers and prospects, saying, “We’re a new Oracle.”. Use research to understand the context.

Paid Search Agency 100

Paid Search Agency Companies Work Management Ethics 100

Chris Koch

FEBRUARY 5, 2010

Having been a journalist for years, I know that these acronyms lead even the most feeble-minded of us journos to the next obvious question: What do you mean when you say (insert acronym here)? I think that this definition will lead to the perpetuation of the brochure-on-steroids interpretation of thought leadership.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Gartner Planning 100

Chris Koch

DECEMBER 28, 2010

From Facebook to email to putting telephones on employees’ desks (remember, the telephone started as a “consumer” communication technology, too), companies think that every new wave is going to lead to gajillions in lost productivity. Sales support is marketing’s primary role. Dude, this stuff isn’t heroin, okay? Social media has ROI.

Planning 100

Planning Work Management Paid Search Agency B2B Thought Leadership 100

Chris Koch

OCTOBER 1, 2010

But marketers must lead and support SMEs in the development and publishing processes. You will never track it through to a sale and if you do, you’ll never be able to separate it from other factors affecting the sale. Thought leadership has a role to play, but it’s more to do with building a relationship than making the sale.

Thought Leadership 100

Thought Leadership Social Media B2B Thought Leadership Peer-to-peer 100