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B2B Tech Messaging Horror Stories

Horror Stories: B2B Tech Messaging

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B2B tech messaging tends to be big, broad, and vague. Which is the opposite of what savvy B2B buyers are looking for.

So often, B2B marketers leave customers in the dark in terms of:

  • The intended audience.
  • Relevancy to buyers’ “jobs to be done.”
  • How the product or service uniquely solves their business problems.
  • Whether the messaging is to be believed at all.

After conducting scores of B2B message testing studies, we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the truly horrifying.

Here are some common messaging mistakes to avoid before you launch your next landing page, product marketing initiative, or content calendar.

Horror Story 1: It’s Unclear Who It’s For… And Who It’s NOT For.

Tech companies, powerful visionaries that they are, have a tendency to go really broad with their messaging. For example: “Your vision. Your Cloud.” Or: “Cloud for all.” But is it really for everyone?

B2B products and services are rarely intended for the use of any and all. Unfortunately, it’s rare for tech companies to make it immediately clear who their intended audience is.

Buyers shouldn’t have to work to figure out whether a product or service is relevant to them. B2B messaging should make it really obvious. Whose life will be made easier by this B2B solution? Use visuals, smart layouts, and clever formatting to make sure the eye is easily drawn to copy that identifies and speaks directly to key buyers.

Horror Story 2: It’s Not Written In The Voice of The Buyer(s).

Is your target buyer technical? Do you have someone technical on your marketing team?  You should. At least make sure you get someone technical to vet your messaging.

Technical buyers will lose confidence in your solution if the messaging gets the jargon wrong or strings random concepts together in a way that doesn’t make sense. Or if it skirts specifics and stays vague. (Also, technical buyers will be turned off by anything they consider “fluff.” They don’t like marketing buzzwords.)

Context matters. Don’t message in a vacuum. Do what you need to do to author, edit, and verify that you’re writing messaging that resonates with your key buyer personas.

Here’s a place where understanding your target buyers’ “jobs to be done” really comes in handy. You’ll score lots of brownie points if you can speak to the specific issues your solution solves for the intended buyer.

And remember, B2B buying decisions usually happen by committee. In other words, you need to convince a group of stakeholders, not just an individual.

Your B2B tech messaging should speak to all the key buyer personas involved in making the purchase decision- not just the end-user.

Horror Story 3: The Messaging Is Stranded From The Brand Strategy.

The goal isn’t just for the customer to remember the product. You also want them to remember the brand.

If your product is part of a larger suite of solutions, your messaging shouldn’t make it sound like an isolated offering.

Graphics are often an effective method of demonstrating that a particular solution or tool is part of a holistic suite of offerings.

Your B2B messaging strategy needs to connect the product or service back to the company.

Horror Story 4: It’s Poorly Written.

Bad grammar creates an unnecessary obstacle for communicating the relevance of your solution. Especially if your target buyers are non-native English speakers.

In our B2B message testing studies, we’ve watched scores of buyers use the bulk of their energy trying to parse out the intention behind our client’s initial attempt at messaging. This prevents customers from moving down the purchase funnel.

Make things as easy as possible on the buyer. Communicate clearly. Don’t make them work to figure out why it’s smart to buy your product or service.

So. Use complete sentences. Simplify your wording. Amplify your main message so that it’s the most noticeable thing on the page, the paragraph, etc. Only attempt to convey one idea per sentence. Make sure you can get through a sentence without having to take a breath when reading out loud. Shorten the sentence if you can’t. Edit. Edit a lot. (More on this here.)

Horror Story 5: There’s No Hierarchy of Emphasis.

Tech companies love listing the attributes of their product or service. Unfortunately, they often neglect to explain how these features solve problems for their target buyers.

Also, lists are just plain hard to read. Reading a list gets monotonous and boring. Which of the many adjectives is the reader supposed to remember? What’s the main point of the product? What makes it special?

Say you’ve got five key selling points. Please do not pack all five key points into one sentence or even one paragraph. That will mute the impact.

Instead, give each key point its own space and separate emphasis. Add in supporting points as needed. Make sure the supporting points strengthen the main idea, rather than sounding like isolated factors.

Strategic messaging requires a hierarchy of emphasis. Your marketing team needs to be clear on the main selling points of the solution and the supporting, secondary factors.

Readers are more likely to remember what is given the greatest emphasis. If everything has the same level of emphasis, readers may struggle to remember anything at all.

What do you want the main takeaways to be? Emphasize accordingly.

Horror Story 6: Unsubstantiated Boasts, Vague Terms, & Marketing Buzzwords.

During our market research studies, we’ve watched many B2B buyers grow suspicious over broad messaging claims.

Unless you have substantial, authoritative backup for making such a claim, shy away from declaring yourself “the best” or “the leading solution.”  When such lofty claims are made, we’ve noticed that B2B buyers often take it as a challenge to think of a brand with a better solution.

Further, to be blunt, messaging that reads like marketing wrote it puts many B2B buyers off.

B2B customers often take vague terminology as a red flag, as it may indicate that the solution is being pushed by a company who doesn’t understand how it will actually be used.

Further, marketing buzzwords tend to scare off technical buyers. These customers will only be convinced by brands that get what their day-to-day entails.

So, be as specific as possible. What does your solution actually do? How does it do it? How will it fit into the work of the buyer? Specifically, what value does it bring to your key customers?

Also, marketers, make sure to run your messaging by someone who is well-versed in the business and technical context of your target buyers.

The Takeaways

To summarize: don’t make your buyers work to figure out your solution’s relevancy and value-add.

Make sure your B2B messaging:

  • Identifies the intended audience. It should be very obvious who the solution was built for.
  • Is written in the voice of the buyer. Messaging needs to get the B2B buyers’ business and technical context right.
  • Connects to back to the brand strategy. Give the reader an easy pathway to related solutions and information.
  • Is easy to read. Pay attention to good grammar and avoid run-on sentences.
  • Has a hierarchy of emphasis. Be clear internally on the top 2-5 selling points you want the reader to take away. The main value-add should have the most space, visual draw, ink, etc.
  • Is specific. Avoid vague terms, unsubstantiated boasts, and marketing buzzwords. Explain how your solution accomplishes the benefits you’re boosting. Back up your claims.

Need some help with messaging strategy? We offer B2B messaging upgrades and

Special thanks to Senior Consultant Colleen Clancy, Senior Research Analyst Hercules Randolph IV, and Research Analyst Courtney Bae for advising on this piece. 

With custom market research and marketing services, Cascade Insights helps companies seize opportunities in the B2B technology sector. We work with everyone from enterprise tech stalwarts to up-and-comers in fields such as FinTech, MarTech, Health Tech, and more.

Ready to Book It? Probably Not

Ready to Book It? Probably Not

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Mistaking a fancy title for thought leadership is a common mistake in the book publishing business. After all, a fancy title does not a good author make.

Writing books on professional topics can be a great marketing strategy or a wasted exercise in ego inflation. Before writing a book, make sure you have something worth saying that people will want to listen to.

In the latest episode of B2B Revealed, Sean Campbell interviewed Caleb Breakey, CEO of Speak It To Book. They discussed the best way to transform your business views into a story worthy of publication.

Building Your Business With a Book

For business leaders and aspiring thought leaders, books need to serve a purpose. It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to turn your experience as a B2B sales leader or consultant into a career as a full-time author. Since that’s not a viable path, why write a book?

As Breakey told it, the book should be one piece of a larger funnel. Start by publishing a book for free. It’s much easier to do so these days with the proliferation of eBooks and services like Kindle Unlimited. Next, you need a plan for how you’ll connect with your readers.

“The book is just the start,” said Breakey. “Now, what’s the next step with you? Is it a video series…Are you doing speaking engagements? Do you want to host a retreat for this particular niche?”

The goal isn’t to be a full-time, best-selling author. Instead, the goal is to use the book as a door opener: to conversations with customers, partners, and people interested in your industry.

This planning should happen before any writing — or ghost-writing — begins on the book itself. Once you have the plan for how the book will be used, then it’s safe to begin your investment in writing a book.

“Writing Is So Easy a 10-Year Old Could Do It”

Once they’ve got a plan, many authors foolishly assume they’ll jump into the writing process and wrap it up in a month or two. For example, let’s say a VP of something at a Fortune 100 company for the last five years leaves her role to start a consultancy. To promote the business, she decides to write a book about her experiences in her past role. The book never makes it passed the outline.

Believing a book will come naturally is a common misguided assumption, according to Breakey. In his time helping people turn their book ideas into reality, Breakey has seen far too many Chapter One drafts sitting in a desk drawer, collecting dust.

Writing is harder than it looks, folks. Breakey shared this joke: “There’s a saying that goes around in the writing industry about a writer and a doctor who go out on the golf course. And the doctor says to his writer friend, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, I’m so excited, I’m taking off the summer from my practice to become a writer.’ The writer turns back and says, ‘That’s crazy, because I’m actually taking off this summer to go into brain surgery with you as well.’”

The moral of the story? That writing a book is going to take time, especially for people who are long on industry experience and short on crafting stories.

Imagine Your Audience Standing There — Bored

These words of caution aren’t meant to discourage all would-be authors. Writing is about communicating important ideas, not seeing if you can hit an arbitrary page count. Instead, focus on the value you’re bringing to readers.

To do this, Breakey recommends putting yourself in the shoes of the audience. “Is it giving you value in the first five pages? Check. Great, keep reading. Is the author giving you value in the next 10 pages? Great, check. Keep reading.”

Publish something that delivers value on every page so that you can keep the attention of your audience. If that means your “book” is just a 45-page PDF, that’s fine.

After all, it’s better to leave your audience wanting more than to bore them so badly they don’t want any more from you, ever.

The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B expertise in your life? There are many ways to follow us.

Heat Up Your Cold Email

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How can sellers use cold email to engage rather than irritate?

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Ryan O'DonnellIn this episode of B2B Revealed, Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell chats with Replyify Co-Founder Ryan O’Donnell on how to use cold email to increase audiences and avoid the spam filter.

Obviously, cold email is more likely to be welcomed when it is relevant to the recipient. But Campbell mentions how common it is for him to open a cold email that has nothing to do with his work. “…It wasn’t targeted, it wasn’t relevant, there wasn’t appropriate research done, [and] it wasn’t packaged correctly,” he said. Clearly, the seller hadn’t bothered to make sure their outreach was of value the recipient. This is a big no-no.

Instead, start with those who already have demonstrated an interest in your product or service. “The easiest place to look, if you already have clients, is your existing client base,” O’Donnell explained. These folks are much more likely to find your outreach applicable to their work than someone contacted out of the blue.

O’Donnell provides some helpful guidelines to prevent sellers from flooding customers’ inboxes and trying their patience. “We like to see 3-5 sentences per email. We like 5-10 emails delivered over the course of 30-45 days, with a mix of give-and-take. You’re giving the [audience] something of value,” O’Donnell said. Make sure buyers can quickly grasp the point of your communication and how it relates to their work. While an occasional follow-up is OK, don’t just keep bugging people who haven’t replied. Instead, focus your energy on those who have chosen to engage in a conversation.

Streamlining your cold email processes is possible through automation platforms such as Replyify. “Replyify helps you manage replies and to-do items, automatically send emails, manage unsubscribes, update contact information, and move folks around,” O’Donnell said. “Once you actually create these different sequences, and you put a strategy around reaching out to these different segments, or personas. It becomes really easy to keep that going because once the automation takes over on the email side, you’re just feeding the beast.” This platform allows sellers to monitor all of their cold emails for legal compliance as well as assess and hone targeting efforts.

In essence, cold email shouldn’t be a shot in the dark. It should be a clear, targeted message with direct relevance to the recipient. Aim to start a conversation, not bury the buyer in a deluge of unwanted email. Add value, not spam.

Defrost Your Cold Email Writing Skills

Want to improve your cold email writing skills, but don’t know where to begin? Listen to the full episode for more on this topic and check out our guide to sending legal cold emails along with tips for effective written communication.

Do you need more B2B brilliance? Check out the many ways you can follow us.

Your Favorite B2B Podcasts of 2017

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This year our podcast went through a major change. The B2B Market Research Podcast became B2B Revealed. Our focus broadened to a myriad of issues that impact our clients in the B2B technology sector. The result? More interviews, more thought leaders, more insight, and an even better B2B Podcast.

As the end of the year approaches, we decided to take a look back at your favorite episodes of the year.

Your Favorite B2B Market Research Podcasts of 2017

1. Customer Insights: You Need More Than Market Segmentation Data

For this episode, B2B Market Research/B2B Revealed Host Sean Campbell reviewed Clayton Christensen’s “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice.”

Campbell, also the CEO of Cascade Insights, explains the book’s special relevance to product teams and corporate researchers.

Understanding “jobs to be done” allows companies to build the solutions their target customers actually need and to identify unmet market needs.

Ignore target customers’ “jobs to be done” at your peril. If a rival meets that need before or better than you, you’re ripe for disruption. Market research can uncover your customers’ “jobs to be done” and spot disruption red flags.

2. Big Data Ethics: Math Responsibility

Big data is just a bunch of numbers without analysis. But, that analysis has to have a basis on good math. Unfortunately, many a big, impactful decision in business, technology, and government have a basis on flawed math and bad analysis… Worse, these false arguments give the appearance of being backed by big data. Needless to say, it has never been more important to math responsibly.

In this episode, Campbell discusses Cathy O’Neil’s excellent book “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy” and how it applies to the B2B technology field.

3. The Pre-Flight Checklist for Research Presentations

No one wants to sit through a boring presentation. To capture and hold your audience’s attention, you need to transform yourself into a master storyteller.

Luckily, there is an easy way to make sure your presentation is interesting, effectively communicating your story, and highlighting critical information. Campbell shares a pre-flight checklist to keep your business presentation from crashing and burning. Make sure your audience’s key takeaways are the ones you intended.

4. Market Research Recruiting: How To Get A Superb Sample

Unfortunately, sloppy market research recruiting is the industry standard. But why waste your research budget on a panel firm when they interview respondents that aren’t qualified to answer the study questions?

Campbell explains Cascade Insights’ unique approach to finding study respondents that can truly answer clients’ questions in context.

5. Sales Needs A Say In Strategy

Through interactions with buyers, your sales team is essentially doing qualitative research on target customers every day. So why do so many B2B tech companies overlook their sales team’s experiences as a valuable source of data?

Campbell describes the unfortunate tendency for B2B tech companies to isolate their sales teams. He goes on to explain why it’s in companies’ best interest to give sales a seat at the table when determining strategy.

Your Favorite B2B Revealed Podcasts of 2017

1. Why You Suck at Virtual Presentations

This episode features Roger Courville, the “Michael Jordan of online presentations and virtual classes.” Courville and Campbell discuss how to effectively teach via webinar, captivating audiences, and generating engagement.

2. Creating The Category

Campbell talks mid-market marketing with Matt Ipri, vice president of marketing and business development at Decision Lens. The two discuss how to create a new category when the product is first-of-its-kind.

3. Is Cold Email a Legal Evil?

Campbell takes a hard look at cold email legislation, market research loopholes, and international law. Spoiler alert: the legality of cold email varies from country to country.

He also shares tips for B2B tech companies to keep their cold emails legal, and less evil than the rest of the junk mail flooding your inbox.

4. Sell Like The Avengers

In this episode, Campbell discusses evolutions in B2B sales with Nic Read, founder of SalesLabs, co-founder of RGI and EdX, researcher, author, consultant, and teacher. Together they discuss how old sales habits need to change, and new approaches to consider.

5. The Spy Who Wasn’t – Clarifying Competitive Intelligence

No, it is not corporate espionage. Campbell interviews Competitive Intelligence Expert August Jackson on the strategy, systemization, and ethics of CI. Learn why a strategic pricing analysis program can get you more information than even the competitor’s price book.

Thanks For Listening!

We’ve enjoyed bringing B2B tech topics and thought leaders to our listeners. Here’s to another great year of B2B!

From all of us at Cascade Insights, we wish a happy holiday season and a fantastic 2018 to all of our listeners.

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Your Favorite B2B Posts of 2017

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It was a good year for B2B content. As we reflect on 2017, we bring you a countdown of our most read articles of the year.

10. What To Read In B2B

Our “B2B Book Reviews: One-Sentence Recaps” page offers an efficient path to seeking wisdom from experts and staying on top of new trends.

We provide you with some of the best classic and recent books on B2B – and a few we don’t think are worth your time.

For example, here’s what we had to say about these books:

This list will provide you the opportunity to improve your B2B skills, and is continuously updated with new books to rush order or avoid like the plague.

Have a book that you want us to review? Let us know.

9. #Mrx Pro-Tip: Interview Your Competitors’ Ex-Sellers

“Running B2B Market Research? 26 Questions to Ask Sales Reps” reveals the wealth of insight you can access by interviewing former members of rival sales teams.

This piece includes key questions to help you get the right data. For example:

  • What were the key selling points of the competitor’s product or service?
  • Which product features were clients most interested?
  • What buying criteria did clients have?
  • Which features left customers uninterested or unimpressed?
  • Which of the competitor’s product or service features were the most lacking?

Check out the full article for more key questions and best practices for interviewing ex-sellers to better understand your rivals.

8. “You Can’t Always Have Quant With Your Qual.”

B2B tech is a niche field. As such, it can sometimes be extremely challenging or downright impossible to get an appropriate sample for a quantitative study. Luckily, qualitative research can get the answers without relying on a mathematically irresponsible sample.

Learn how to design the right kind of study to match your needs with “You Can’t Always Have Quant With Your Qual.”

7. If You Have a Point, Make It & Other Grumpy Writing Tips

If you’re in B2B tech, chances are, your job requires you to communicate through writing at some point. Read “Write Right: Convincing Content” for the best ways to get your point across.

Marketing Manager Isabel Gautschi encourages you to mean what you say, make smooth transitions, procrastinate strategically, and say it in fewer words. She didn’t earn her editing nickname “Half-As-Long” for nothing. Check out the piece for more curmudgeonly advice for writing compelling arguments.

6. There Are No Stupid Questions, But There Sure Are Some Smart Ones

In “101 Market Research Questions,” we share some of the sharpest questions we have based studies off of for B2B tech clients. Check out the smartest questions our clients have asked us to answer over the years.

5. “This Methodology Opens Numerous Possibilities.”

“Gender Gap: A Look at 50 Tech Giants” shows us that LinkedIn ad targeting opens the door for a number of studies of the tech industry.

We took a look at the workforces of 50 large tech companies to uncover insights on the gender gap and to reveal the demographic information accessible to researchers through ad targeting.

Yep, the gender gap is still pretty gapingly wide. The good news is that researchers are not forced to wait for intermittent diversity reports to study it.

4. Disruption Red Flag: Competitors Know Your Customers’ “Jobs To Be Done” Better Than You Do

Are you missing a critical measurement of success? Find out with “Customer Insights: You Need More Than Market Segmentation Data.”

It’s essential for companies to understand “jobs to be done” in order to build solutions that truly meet their customers’ needs.

Using Clayton Christensen‘s latest book, “Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice,” we examine essential questions for product teams:

  • What are target customers’ “jobs to be done”?
  • Does your solution get the job done?
  • Do you have the right data to measure whether or not it does?
  • Do customers have a “job to be done” that no current marketplace solutions meet? If so, this is an opportunity for innovation.

3. “Don’t Just Drop the Bomb and Leave.”

It’s difficult to be the bearer of bad news, but we share our constructive approach in “How Good Researchers Give Bad News.”

Check it out to learn how we turn bad news into constructive criticism. Advice includes:

  • Be direct.
  • Use data to defeat fear.
  • Acknowledge sample bias.
  • Describe the disaster you’ve averted.
  • Offer a cure.
  • Remember: There was a fire before you arrived.

Good researchers know not just share devastating findings and leave. Instead, they deliver the bad news, endure the pushback, and point the client in a direction that can improve their business.

2. Keep Your Presentation From Crashing & Burning

“The Pre-Flight Checklist for Research Presentations” provides a handy way to make sure your presentation is ready to soar to success. Relevant to anyone giving a business presentation, our advice shares practical tips for keeping your audience engaged.

1. Our Ageism In Tech Data Got Your Attention

Your favorite article of this year was, “Ageism in Tech: The Silent Career Killer.”

We examined government data, a Payscale study and LinkedIn ad targeting data to research ageism in the tech industry. Spoiler alert: the tech industry is not kind to those over age 35.

Thanks For Reading!

This year has provided us the ability to continue growing as a business, expanding our client base, and provide you with quality content that is important to you. We continue to appreciate our listeners and readers and encourage them to share their terrific feedback. We look forward to sharing more research, book reviews, and exciting interviews with you in the coming year. Thank you for your support, and we wish you the happiest of New Years!

This post is brought to you by Cascade Insights.

customer satisfaction research

People-Centric Marketing: Wisdom From Tom Shoemaker

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Large companies lose touch with their customers all the time.

Search for B2B Revealed on your favorite podcast player (iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and more) to subscribe.

Luckily, you can reconnect one conversation at a time.

Without investing in customer conversations, marketing will be off message, sales will say the wrong things, and product sales will suffer.

Virtually or in-person, have those conversations. It’s worth it.

In this episode of B2B Revealed, Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell and Tom Shoemaker, CMO of itslearning, explains why customer conversations should be at the center of your marketing efforts.

Don’t Let Your Marketing Be a Monotone. In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • Key questions to ask during customer conversations.
  • Why you should double or triple the number of customer conversations you’re having.
  • Tips for adjusting your marketing strategy for enterprise and mid-market.
  • Warning signs that you’re taking your customers for granted.
  • The real-world strategy PTC used to effectively regain touch with their customers and build stronger relationships.
  • How to make a value roadmap and why it’s important.
  • Why aspiring marketers should strive to pass “The Beer Test.”

Notable Quotes:

“Don’t be afraid to raise your hand, jump in, and do what needs doing.” – Tom Shoemaker on maintaining career success.

“Regardless of how many customer conversations you have, you should probably have twice as many, or more.” – Tom Shoemaker discussing how to properly conduct customer satisfaction research.

“What are the things they care about, what are their drivers.”– Tom Shoemaker on focusing on the customer’s story.

“We systematically talked about the things that mattered throughout the process of going from design to manufacturing to service. Then we articulated the things that companies ought to be looking for in a technology provider.” – Tom Shoemaker explaining his company’s change in their outlook as a true process-oriented, customer-oriented and value-based selling, consultative selling B2B software company.

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Channel Sales

Coaching Your Channel: An Interview With Steve Smith

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Business buyers have shoved IT out of the spotlight.

Search for B2B Revealed on your favorite podcast player (iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and more) to subscribe.

Surprisingly, IT service firms are failing to adjust to this new reality. Ill-advisedly, they continue to target IT departments rather than business buyers.

In this episode of B2B Revealed, Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell interviews Steve Smith, president of GrowthSource Coaching, on IT service firm survival. They discuss how failures in communication lead to bad sales strategies, and how companies can course-correct.

Smith is an expert in business management, leadership, and marketing.

Rediscover The Vision Of Your IT Services Company. Listen To Learn:

  • Red flags that your IT service firm has neglected its business goals.
  • The importance of understanding your business buyers’ “trade talk.”
  • How to translate your company’s value into terms that matter to your business buyers.
  • The difference between transactional and consultative selling.
  • Realistic business-building strategies.
  • How to be a better IT service firm leader or manager.

Notable Quotes:

“If you don’t know where you want to go, any place you end up at is going to be okay.” – Steve Smith, cautioning IT service firms to prioritize their business goals.

“The longer you’ve been at your business, or your occupation, or your particular trade, the more you start thinking and speaking in trade talk.” –Steve Smith, emphasizing the importance of sales teams being able to speak the lingo of their business buyers.

“You have to get out of your own head, if you stay in your own head for too long, your head will be your biggest competition.” – Steve Smith, discussing the importance of communication and getting sales teams comfortable with the human dynamic.

Mentioned in this Episode:

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What is Competitive Intelligence

The Spy Who Wasn’t – Clarifying Competitive Intelligence

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What is competitive intelligence (CI)?

A nuanced understanding of the marketplace in which you and your competitors are situated? Yes.

Corporate espionage? No.

Jackson was first introduced to the field at MCI, where he led a nascent CI effort. Jackson has since had CI roles with British Telecom, Verizon, and now Ernst & Young. He is a firm believer in following a systematic approach to gathering competitive intelligence.

Get Competitive Context. Listen To Learn:

  • What is competitive intelligence?
  • How this research can help you anticipate your rival’s next move.
  • The difference between competitor intelligence and competitive intelligence.
  • How to build an ethical competitive intelligence practice.
  • Personality traits that make for a great CI analyst.
  • How to conduct an effective pricing analysis.

Notable Quotes:

“With a good strategic pricing analysis program, you can get something that’s even better than if you had the competitor’s price book.” – August Jackson

“A good pricing intelligence program will give you a very clear sense of what your competitors are likely to do in these situations. So, you can adapt and develop strategies that allow you to get out ahead of that.” – August Jackson

“Everyone will be surprised to learn just how willing people are to talk to someone, and I’ve never found the need, even remotely, to pretend to be anyone else other than who I am.” – August Jackson

Mentioned in this Episode:

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Productivity apps

This Is Your Brain On Notifications: An Interview With Jill Konrath

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Thinking about taking a break to check your email? Think again. These few minutes are costlier to your productivity than you think.

“70 percent of emails received are attended to within 6 seconds within arriving in our inbox. The recovery time for that interruption is 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption.” – Jill Konrath, Time Savior.

Well-known author and a thought leader in the sales field, Jill Konrath, speaks with Cascade Insights CEO Sean Campbell. They discuss key points in her latest book, “More Sales, Less Time” and the importance of taking control of your time.

Everything asks for a notification these days: email, slack, calendar, text, etc. Jill explains how to turn off these notifications, save for texting alerts from family, along with important apps that will help you prioritize. “Our time is our greatest asset, and blocking off times when we can really focus on what really matters enables us to get it done certainly more quickly, but at a higher caliber,” Jill says.

Today’s distractions are killing our creative and strategic potential. “The more time we spend in an environment that gives us quick hits of seemingly vital, but likely irrelevant information, the harder it is for our brains to do the kind of creative and strategic thinking that is so necessary.” She says.

Jill explains how to control your time and live by design instead of by default, along with making a habit of saving time and completing priority projects.  Jill also shares a number of productivity apps you can use to stay more focused during the day.

Unlock Productivity Wisdom. Listen To Learn:

  • Why you’re addicted to checking notifications and what you need to do about it.
  • The true costs of distractions when it comes to personal productivity.
  • How you can stop responding to every notification, at the moment it arrives, with one or more of these productivity apps: RescueTime, SaneBox. Unroll.Me. Freedom.
  • About her first book which focuses on how you can be more effective in “Selling to BIG Companies.”
  • Why she wrote her second book, “SNAP Selling,” and her third, “Agile Selling.”

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mastering the mid-market

Mastering The Mid-Market: Lessons In Leadership With Charlie Nooney

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If you’re going to transition from one market segment to the other, you sometimes just have to “rip off the Band-Aid hard,” according to MobiTV CEO Charlie Nooney.

CEO of MobiTV, Charlie Nooney, explains how to lead through a market transition and the evolution of IPTV services in this podcast interview with Cascade Insights’ CEO Sean Campbell.

They also discuss the future of IPTV and the significant role MobiTV has to play in creating that future.

The conversation wraps with a great discussion on some of the leadership lessons Charlie learned from his time at Walt Disney company and what it takes to build a great company culture.

In short, you’re going to love hearing what Charlie has to say.

Change Your Company Culture For The Better. Listen To Learn:

  • All about the US IPTV market and how they’re changing.
  • How cable operators (large and small) will have to evolve to survive.
  • How to re-structure sales and marketing efforts you so you focus on mastering the mid-market.
  • Why you should, as Charlie says, “never let a failure go to waste.”
  • Learn why Charlie believes that, “The culture is in many ways in direct relation to the product… it’s hard to overcome not being excited about what you’re doing.”

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