The Mountaintop Insights, Inspiration and Perspective for Enlightened Marketers

A week or so ago, I wrote an article for www.B2Bbloggers.com  called ‘Want to Engage Senior Executives? Think Mobile“. Since this post, I have been speaking with some of my customers about advancing this notion.

Here is what we have come up with:

• The problem with direct engagement of Business Elite is that it is only possible once –
  • You have successfully engaged gate keepers and influencers; or
  • You already have existing relationships with them, i.e existing customers.
• It must be integrated with strategic sales and account executives, in fact, these folks are the best at leading the charge to engage senior execs
• It must be integrated with other marketing tactics such as executive events-seminars-round tables, blogs/newsletters, and sales material.
• All mobile content must be targeted at senior executives, which means really being brutal in terms of brevity, message and alignment to customer need.

The big thing we all agreed to was that it all had to be strategically planned and integrated into a long term demand generation program starting at first contact with potential influencers to working in support of sales.

The approaches and tactics we use to develop and maintain customer relationships are converging as quickly as technology is converging, but it doesn’t seem to be on the radar for most B2B marketing organizations.

The approach requires us to build programs that are horizontal in nature engaging mobile, experiential, social channels as well as seamlessly integrating sales teams and specialists; and ensuring that it meets the requirements of their busy lifestyle in and out of the office.

I’d be interested to understand what you think of this and how your organization is currently engaging senior executives.

Cheers and thanks!

Jeff – Sensei

First off, sorry for the huge delay in posting! Business has been crazy with lots of great things going on.

A couple new posts are coming to the mountaintop over the next week, including:

– A new Darwinian article on Social Dominance – How to build a brand with socially dominant traits

– An online demand generation case study based on a very recent and highly successful project for a mid size B2B client in the services sector

– A new behavioral series that will be going up at www.b2bbloggers.com as well.  This series will look at some advanced theories on online human behavior including: building positive obligation, the value of appreciation, and why CRM doesn’t benefit the customer.

Also have some upcoming articles being published through some very cool folks that are helping me build some awareness. Should be an exciting May and June!

Thanks for your patience and updates to the Mountain Top coming early next week.

Cheers!

Jeff – Sensei

As human beings, we are ruled by time. In every aspect of life, we seem to struggle against it to try and gain an advantage of some kind. For me this has been top of mind of late.

I started to think how time was affecting me (and my B2B clients) of late…

1. Planning and Prep – The time necessary to properly plan Social Media programs is deceiving. This is due in large part to two factors.
   1. Doing it properly versus just jumping in. Developing a strategy that is aligned with the brand experience and integrated with other marketing/sales programs takes a lot of work. It is well beyond just making a Twitter or FaceBook account.
   2. Finding the right people. This goes well beyond all the smoke and mirrors of having a so called “Social Media expert”. Finding the right people to be involved including strategist, management, content writers, analysts, and researchers, not to mention third parties like partners and content contributors is very time consuming.
2. Commitment – In my mind, this is the one that almost everyone has underestimated. Because of the nature of Social Media relationships, the medium demands much more time than one way communication channels. The difference is traditional communications (the ones we are all used to) work on a “burst” type model. You prep, send and watch results, much like chess – you have time to think about your next move. Social Media on the other hand, is constant and dynamic which means it is very difficult to automate around and needs constant human intervention of all kinds. In Social Media you have to think on your feet and that is very different and difficult for large enterprise.
3. The Great Unknown – Social Media really is an unknown to almost every large enterprise and that means risk.
   1. Executive and management make decisions slower to try and understand what they are getting into; certainly the lawyers want to make sure the enterprise is not exposed.
   2. We are learning as we go. Contrary to what the self proclaimed gurus say, this is a complex medium that is continuing to evolve rapidly. The unknown factor means that large enterprise should be using a cautious, risk managed approach; one that grows organically and is constantly adapted to fit social and community need.

For me personally, time hasn’t been kind. I am admittedly struggling to find balance on 5 crtiical areas of my business and personal life.

• My family and being a Dad to three small children.
• My business and my clients (and demand for services is increasing, not decreasing)
• My book (and with a publishing deal pending, the demand on that is going to increase significantly)
• My blog (unfortunately lower in the totem pole than i would like)
• My personal life (making time to work out and look after me)

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What I am finding is that balance is being created naturally as I re-align my priorities and adapt my work habits to accommodate positive change.

• I am using the blog to support the book and my clients which increases the priority of the blog and enables me to accomplish 3 goals through one channel.
• I have begun to doing very active things with my kids incorporating exercise into almost everything. This has worked so well on many fronts as the kids love being active with me and I get even more time with them.
• I am really being fussy about the projects I take on and have leveraged a couple great people to help on current projects. End result is a time gain for me without affecting the results to my clients.

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As I work with clients, I am working with them to help find natural balance to make time our ally instead of an enemy. Maybe time isn’t an enemy after all – maybe it was my perspective that was flawed…