Most successful companies are not category creators – even though they may look like that to folks that come from large companies. Startups should be very, very wary of advice they get around this. I recently had two startups come to me talking about their attempts “category creation,” for example, when what they were really […]
Category: Leadership
What the democratization of learning means for Chief Revenue Officers and their teams
Chief revenue officers may have all the career experience they need to hire a sales manager, but judging the skills of a software developer may be a bit of a stretch. Of course, most CROs probably don’t oversee teams of programmers today, but the increasingly data-driven nature of sales means they could be pulled into […]
Inside The Mind Of . . . Gil Dudkiewicz
Gil Dudkiewicz is the Co-Founder and CEO of StartApp, which he founded in 2010. StartApp’s goal is to connect partners with consumers in ways that benefit the partner and the consumer, through mobile data insights, helping partners understand what today’s mobile user is really like – where they spend their time in the mobile space, […]
Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave explains his decision to pull Collision out of the United States
Paddy Cosgrave has heard his conference referred to as the “Davos of tech” before, but the CEO of Collision says there are at least two things that differentiate it from the World Economic Forum. “We’re not in the Swiss Alps — and poor people are welcome at our event,” Cosgrave joked to the audience at […]
Editor’s Note: The rise of the Chief Revenue Officer, explained
I’ve rarely been a B2B buyer, and I’ve never been a B2B salesperson, but I have spent most of my life being witness to those trying — and usually failing — to make a B2B sale. As an editor, it has often been part of my role to tag along with salespeople at the various […]
Meet the top 20 B2B Professionals To Watch in 2019
Here’s the problem with an annual list like B2B News Network‘s B2B Pros to Watch: we could justifiably run many of the same people we celebrated in 2018 — Anne Handley, Jay Baer, Lee Odden and so on — every single year. Of course, that wouldn’t be very interesting, and it would do a disservice […]
SurveyMonkey CMO Leela Srinivasan wants to answer questions across the entire enterprise
The best thing for SurveyMonkey CMO Leela Srinivasan to focus on is: Strengthening awareness and perception of the firm’s brand Educating the market about its enterprise capabilities Demonstrating traction with key customers As you might have guessed, the correct answer to that question would be “all of the above,” according to Srinivasan, who joined the […]
In an age of diminishing accountability, here are two things true leaders must do
A Harvard Business Review report found that one out of every two managers fails at accountability. In fact, accountability is one of the most universally neglected leadership behaviors today – across all functional disciplines of companies. Why is this happening? There is no one answer, but many leaders do not want to come off as […]
Inside The Mind Of . . . Dan Levin
Dan Levin is president and co-founder of ViralGains. While in his senior year of college, Dan was inspired to start ViralGains after recognizing the storytelling power of video as a medium for building authentic, meaningful connections between brands, and the people they seek to serve. ViralGains is a digital video ad platform that enables marketers […]
Sprinklr marketing leader Grad Conn is looking for (enterprise) love
Most martech CMOs would be satisfied if their company’s products and services were seen as innovative, easy to use or at least useful. Grad Conn’s mission? To make Sprinklr “the most beloved enterprise software company, ever.” The former CMO of Microsoft, Conn took on the role of chief marketing and experience officer at Sprinklr, a […]
Why B2B firms have to stop clinging to the same old employee engagement surveys
Poor Ian. He was supposed to be taking some time off last month, after a busy quarter designing and administering employee engagement surveys for several large organizations. But he just can’t relax, because a little like Santa, he has made his lists, checked them twice and has a high degree (+/– 3%, 97 times out […]
Let’s stop pretending corporate culture is on the C-Suite agenda and do what it takes to put it there
I came across this well-meaning article a few weeks ago. It’s about how to set up and run a corporate culture committee in your organization. Well that sounds swell, doesn’t it? Get some of your bouncy, enthusiastic, engaged Tigger employees, order some muffins and let ‘er rip. Why, in no time, you’ll be hosting fun BBQs, debating corporate […]
Inside The Mind Of . . . Rivi Bloch
Rivi Bloch is the current division chief executive of Taptica’s Performance Advertising business, as well as interim CEO of Taptica International Ltd. Rivi was born and raised in Israel, and spent several years living in San Francisco. She pursued academic degrees in Political Science and Law, and regularly draws on those experiences as Taptica continues […]
The Trade Desk CMO Susan Vobejda tells CES 2019 about the campaign that changed her company
She may have been the lone B2B brand leader sitting in a panel discussion at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday, but the Trade Desk CMO Susan Vobejda offered one of the best examples of how to create a marketing campaign whose human elements influenced not only customers but her fellow employees. […]
Editor’s Note: Why the tenure of B2B CMOs can never be long enough
Maybe numbers will come out eventually, but I’m dying to know if B2B CMOs will have time on their side in 2019. Just before the recent holiday season, a B2B sales intelligence software provider called Winmo released the results of a study of marketing leaders and the average tenure they could expect to have in […]
How CMOs can ensure B2B success in a digital world
The shift to digital business is happening. Fast. As companies embrace this shift, the focus of business strategy moves to extracting the maximum insight from customer data stores; insight into customer needs, and likely future behavior. This also means that businesses will need to gather more data, at increasingly granular levels to supplement what the […]
Inside the Mind Of… Yoav Oz
Yoav Oz is the Co-Founder of Spotad, a leading artificial intelligence, mobile advertising technology startup. Spotad enables businesses to bring their own algorithms and data to the programmatic advertising space. The company boasts impressive clients that include Uber, Expedia, Apple Music, OpenTable, Trainline, and more. Oz has over eight years of experience in marketing and advertising, […]
A holiday-timed poem on digital distraction that’s perfect for busy B2B professionals
The author helps produce and facilitate all manner of conferences and events for business professionals, and occasionally ends them with an original poem. The following is an example. Some say embrace the digital disruption I fear it’s more like digital corruption What’s happened to my span of attention? Not to mention my powers of retention […]
How to coordinate effective retrospectives in scrum-based continuous learning
By now, if you’re exploring Agile project management designs then Scrum is likely already on your radar. An Agile method originally created to help software development teams create more sustainable products, the process has evolved to fit any number of project-driven uses. For the unacquainted, Scrum is a bit of an empirically-oriented framework designed to […]
Hitachi Vantara, Rakuten Kobo and Avant dispense some wisdom on surviving disruption
When technological disruption puts you at risk of going out of business, the solution for companies like Hitachi Vantara, Rakuten Kobo and Avant is surprisingly similar: reposition yourselves as brand-new businesses. In a panel discussion at the Toronto Global Forum this week, both large enterprise firms and emerging startups suggested that despite the hype, disruption […]