February 2, 2012
Heroes, martyrs and superstars. We’re all familiar with companies that put way too much burden on people because their processes and systems are broken or inadequate. The consequences of over-dependency on individual heroics? Resource waste stemming from constant need to reinvent the wheel. Burnt out people who tire of constantly being the ”go to” and jump ship. An organization that fails to learn from experience. How does your organization get out of this over-dependency trap? Join us tomorrow, Friday February 3, at 9 a.m. PT, 12 noon ET for the Marketing Operations Future Forum’s weekly TweetChat. Share your experience and learn from your peers at http://www.tweetchat.com/room/FFMO .
Marketing Process Leadership
February 3, 2012 at 9:00 AM — 10:00 AM
http://TweetChat.com/room/FFMO
What happens when a star performer leaves the Marketing group? Hopefully, the Marketing processes perform just as well afterward. To ensure this, Marketing organizations are deploying workflow automation, process diagrams, knowledge management, and organizational learning. What does it take to move from people-dependence to process-dependence for Marketing success?
Join us at this #FFMO TweetChat to explore the issues and show case the potential solutions!
http://www.tweetchat.com/room/FFMO
(FFMO refers to the Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field — see www.MOFutureForum.com)
Join the Marketing Operations Future Forum LinkedIn Group
Discussion Questions:
Q1 Why is people-dependence undesirable?
Q2 Which Marketing processes are at-risk with people-dependence?
Q3 What barriers prevent Marketing process-dependence?
Q4 How do process diagrams help Marketing?
Q5 How does knowledge management help Marketing?
Q6 How can Marketing deploy organizational learning?
Q7 What forces might impact today’s topic in the near future?
Reference Articles:
Marketing Process Flow Diagrams
Primer on Organizational Learning
From Knowledge Management to Experience Sharing
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/ffmo and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #FFMO hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
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January 26, 2012
Last week our Friday TweetChat explored how Marketing could play a more prominent role in helping CEOs drive the enterprise growth agenda. Propelling the impact of Marketing = increase organizational agility. Yet driving growth doesn’t produce the desired results if the company can’t mobilize behind the plan. That’s why cross-organizational alignment is a priority in enterprise today, Marketing needs to embrace this responsibility and Marketing Operations is the means to fulfill it. Join us tomorrow for our Friday TweetChat on this critical topic.
Marketing’s Cross-Organizational Alignment
January 27, 2012
9–10 a.m. PST, 12–1 p.m. EST
http://www.tweetchat.com/room/FFMO
Customers see a brand as one entity, not a series of disjointed departments. So collaboration among Marketing’s stakeholders is essential for great customer experience. Marketing is a hub, or conduit, from the marketplace into the enterprise. Yet, historically, most of Marketing’s efforts are outward-directed without embracing the opportunity to influence internal organizations. What does it take to align Marketing with key stakeholders enterprise-wide?
Join us at this #FFMO TweetChat to explore the issues and show case the potential solutions!
http://www.tweetchat.com/room/FFMO
(FFMO refers to the Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field — see www.MOFutureForum.com)
Join the Marketing Operations Future Forum LinkedIn Group:
Discussion Questions:
Q1 Which internal organizations are important to Marketing?
Q2 Why does Marketing want to align with these organizations?
Q3 What barriers prevent internal alignment?
Q4 Why would these organizations want to collaborate with Marketing?
Q5 What strategies can be used to create alignment?
Q6 What are signs of success in cross-organizational alignment?
Q7 What forces might impact today’s topic in the near future?
Reference Articles:
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/ffmo and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #FFMO hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
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January 19, 2012
Weekly TweetChats for the Marketing Operations Future Forum are back, in celebration of the launch of our new secure membership community at http://www.mofutureforum.com . Join us tomorrow, Friday January 20 at our new time, 9–10 a.m. Pacific 12–1 p.m. Eastern time for our online discussion in our new TweetChat room: http://TweetChat.com/room/FFMO .
Here’s an overview:
An agile enterprise capitalizes on emerging marketplace opportunities to maximize business results. And Marketing can be instrumental to this enterprise capability — if Marketing has a great business intelligence system and has strong alignment cross-organizationally. What does it take to embrace emerging opportunities?
Join us at this #FFMO TweetChat to explore the issues and showcase the potential solutions! http://www.tweetchat.com/room/FFMO. Please note our new hash tag: #FFMO .
(FFMO refers to the Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field — visit www.MOFutureForum.com)
Join the Marketing Operations Future Forum LinkedIn Group:
http://tinyurl.com/mofutureforum)
Discussion Questions:
Q1 What are examples of emerging opportunities?
Q2 What does it mean to be prepared for emerging opportunities?
Q3 What should Marketing’s role be in this preparation?
Q4 What are barriers to this role for Marketing?
Q5 How can Marketing overcome these barriers?
Q6 What are the potential benefits of agility for emerging opportunities?
Q7 What forces might impact today’s topic in the near future?
Reference Articles:
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/ffmo and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #FFMO hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
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November 17, 2011
Our Friday TweetChats continue tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. PT with a focus on customer profitability, one of six areas we consider to be Marketing Operations centers of excellence. Lynn Hunsaker, one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic will be leading the discussion. Join us at http://www.tweetchat.com/room/MOFF for a stimulating and fun online conversation.
Ask ten marketing executives what customer profitability is and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Some see it as the revenue an enterprise squeezes from its customers. Others view it as the impact their organization has on customers’ success. Often overlooked is that these seemingly divergent objectives need not be mutually exclusive.
What does it take to mobilize the enterprise to deliver both optimal customer experience and bottom-line business results?
Join us at this #MOFF TweetChat to explore the issues and show case the potential solutions! http://www.tweetchat.com/room/MOFF
(MOFF = Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field) join the MOFF LinkedIn Group )
Discussion Questions:
Q1 What is customer profitability?
Q2 What practices does customer profitability encompass?
Q3 Why should marketing assume a leadership role in spearheading customer profitability practices?
Q4 What are some implications of marketing seizing this leadership role on the enterprise?
Q5 What metrics are used to measure customer profitability?
Q6 What barriers make these metrics difficult to measure?
Q7 What strategies and methodologies can marketing operations leverage to enable marketing to lead customer profitability?
Q8 What forces might impact our topic today or in the near future?
Reference Article URLs:
Is Delighting the Customer Profitable
Customer Profitability: 7 Tactics You Need Now!
Customers First or Employees First?
What’s Your Customer Experience Value Quotient?
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/moff and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #MOFF hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
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November 10, 2011
Agility is a central theme of the new Marketing Operations Future Forum (see a sneak peak at the public pages of the site. ) We see it as key to propelling the impact of Marketing and, thus, a rich area for Marketing Operations to make a huge difference. This week’s #MOFF TweetChat takes this compelling topic head-on. Join us at 1:30 p.m. Pacific, 4:30 p.m. Eastern tomorrow, Friday November 11, to share your views and learn from your peers.
Given all the attention on agile software development and, more recently, agile marketing, it’s surprising that the topic of agility doesn’t come up more frequently in Marketing Operations discussions.
Exploratory interviews conducted by Marketing Operations Partners found that agility is, indeed, top-of-mind, not just for the CEO but marketing leadership. In fact, the executives we surveyed described agility as one of their most persistent marketing challenges.
Join us at this #MOFF TweetChat to explore the issues and show case the potential solutions! (MOFF = Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field? join the MOFF LinkedIn Group
Discussion Questions:
Q1 What is marketing agility?
Q2 How does “Agile Marketing” differ from marketing agility, if at all?
Q3 What does marketing agility in action look like (examples)?
Q4 What blocks marketing from being more agile?
Q5 How can marketing operations remove roadblocks to enable greater marketing agility?
Q6 What’s the risk to marketing in seizing opportunities to be more agile?
Q7 What’s the consequence of marketing not stepping up to the plate?
Q8 What forces might impact our topic today or in the near future?
Reference Article URLs:
Five Steps to Marketing Agility
Marketing among Most Agile Company Functions
Agility and the New Marketing Organization
Making Marketing Agility Cool
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/moff and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #MOFF hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
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November 3, 2011
To be a strong and credible partner to Sales, Marketing needs to take responsibility for the health and velocity of the sales pipeline. Yet much is outside Marketing’s sphere of control. How do we the very best job of enabling sales when the forecast is foggy and an unexpected storm can appear in the blink of an eye? Join our weekly #MOFF TweetChat tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. Pacific, 4:30 p.m. Eastern to get your arms around this turbulent topic, glean insights from your peers and share what’s worked for you. It’s an hour well spent: http://www.tweetchat.com/room/MOFF .
Unpredictability is the new norm. Whether it’s a temporary shortfall (a newly created hole in the sales pipeline) or a structural shift (a clinical trial or a software beta test that didn’t get to finish line), the speed of change in this 24 x 7 global economy is accelerating geometrically. The good news? Challenge creates opportunity. Marketing has an precedented opportunity to create value and win C-suite credibility.
Join us at this #MOFF TweetChat to explore the issues and show case the potential solutions! (MOFF = Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field – join the MOFF LinkedIn Group
Discussion Questions
Q1 What are some examples of unpredictability on the pipeline?
Q2 How do you know when it’s appropriate to act rather than wait?
Q3 How do you avoid the over-reactive trap?
Q4 What criteria do you use to evaluate trade-offs?
Q5 How do you identify opportunities (strategic/ market shifts)?
Q6 How do you shift from static analysis to an interactive process to ID market hot spots?
Q7 What are some effective strategies to quickly realize what the customer needs and act on it?
Q8 What forces might impact our topic today in the near future?
Reference articles URLS:
“Five Challenges Facing Marketing”
“Why Good Spreadsheets Make Bad Strategies”
“The Secret to Success in a Down Economy: Market Intelligence”
“Adaptive Planning Delivers Marketing Accountability”
Guest Host Bio:
Bob Durstenfeld is director of marketing communications for GLOBALFOUNDRIES. He has more than 25 years experience in electronics industry marketing and has held similar positions at RAE Systems, Agilent Technologies and Hewlett-Packard. Durstenfeld holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UCLA, a master’s in engineering management and international marketing from Santa Clara University and a certificate in market leadership from the Harvard Business School.
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/moff and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #MOFF hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
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October 27, 2011
We hear a lot these days about the Revenue Marketer, an intriguing concept that challenges marketers to step up and take ownership of revenue results in partnership with Sales. Certainly nothing creates quicker credibility in the C-Suite than tangible impact on financial results. Yet lost in the dollar signs in too many revenue-focused efforts is the customer – the key to sustained revenue flow. Aligning sales and marketing to the needs of the customer trumps everything. This Friday at 1:30 p.m. PT, 4:30 p.m. ET, Saad Hameed of LinkedIn leads our weekly Marketing Operations Future Forum TweetChat discussion, bringing his rich experience in aligning sales, marketing, customer and demand operations to spur what I’m confident will be a most stimulating dialogue. Join us at http://www.tweetchat.com/room/MOFF .
With customers in charge today, the fastest path to revenue is ensuring that sales and marketing align their efforts to enable customer to buy. Buying process acceleration involves alignment with the customer journey, enabling sales, developing compelling and relevant integrated campaigns, and optimizing close rates. According to Sirius Decisions, best-in-class organizations experience a 7x better inquiry-to-close rate than average companies so focus on this center of excellence can reap huge rewards. Join this #MOFF TweetChat to explore the issues and potential solutions!
MOFF = Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field – join the MOFF LinkedIn Group
Discussion Questions
Q1 What is the common ground for Sales and Marketing Operations?
Q2 What are the benefits of integrating both responsibilities into a single function?
Q3 What are the limitations?
Q4 How does an integrated approach support the buyer journey?
Q5 How do you balance the instant gratification of demand creation with the buying preferences of the customer?
Q6 What demand generations practices have outlived their usefulness?
Q7 What strategies and tactics will replace these outdated practices?
Q8 What forces might impact our topic today in the near future?
Reference articles:
Design Nurturing Programs to Drive Sales
Attention B2B Marketers: There’s Gold in this Graphic
Improve Your Win Rate with a Customer Buying Pipeline
Think Like Your Customer: Aligning Selling to Buying Process
Guest-Host Bio:
Saad Hameed is Senior Manager of Marketing Operations and Demand Generation at LinkedIn. Previously he was Marketing Program Manager and Solutions Architect at VMware, Senior Consultant of Marketing Automation and Demand Generation at Cisco, and he established the Demand Generation and Sales & Marketing Operations function at InsideView. He holds an MBA in Marketing and BS in Computer Science from California State University – East Bay, and he is Certified Eloqua Marketing Automation Administrator and Certified SalesForce.com Administrator.
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/moff and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #MOFF hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives. Continue the discussion on LinkedIn in the Marketing Operations Future Forum group
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October 20, 2011
After weeks of exploring a variety of elusive marketing challenges and what to do about them, this week’s Marketing Operations Future Forum TweetChat will take a detour to the bigger picture – how can we take Marketing Operations to the next level of effectiveness? I’m excited to guest host the chat and encourage my faithful readers to join us at 1:30 p.m. PT, 4:30 p.m. ET tomorrow, October 21, at http://www.tweetchat.com/room/MOFF
Is automation the be-all end-all for Marketing Operations (MO)? Execs these days are talking about agility and alignment as the mantra for what’s really needed now in Marketing – to enable the organization to embrace emerging opportunities, aligned with both internal and external customers. According to International Data Corporation, MO is the fast-growing field within Marketing, but to what end? Join this #MOFF TweetChat to explore the issues and potential solutions!
MOFF = Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field – join the MOFF LinkedIn Group.
Discussion Questions
Q1 How is Marketing Operations (MO) practiced today?
Q2 What’s changed for the better with the introduction of MO?
Q3 Where is MO still falling short?
Q4 What competencies/responsibilities will MO need to take on?
Q5 Why should MO be taking on these competencies/responsiblities?
Q6 What’s the opportunity cost if MO’s scope stays where it’s at?
Q7 What’s the implication on Marketing/enterprise if MO broadens its scope?
Q8 What forces might impact our topic today in the near future?
Reference articles:
52 Reasons to Embrace MO 2.0
Accountability Marketing Agility
Connecting the Dots Toward Marketing
Guest-Host Bio:
Gary Katz is Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer of Marketing Operations Partners. The company helps marketing organizations go beyond tactical MO 1.0 accountability and efficiency goals to leap forward with strategic and customer-centric MO 2.0, with the aim of running the marketing organization as a value center, driving long-term company growth. Gary created the first-ever university course on Marketing Operations, which he teaches at UC Santa Cruz Extension and online at http://marketingoperations2.info. A prolific writer, speaker and visionary on marketing operations, Gary is also a Certified Strategic Planning Process Facilitator.
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/moff and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #MOFF hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
Continue the discussion on LinkedIn in the Marketing Operations Future Forum group
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October 12, 2011
There’s a lot of chatter these days about sales and marketing alignment as the antidote to an often adversarial, though clearly interdependent, relationship. Effective alignment is often blocked by out-of-alignment incentive structures. This Friday, we continue our weekly TweetChats on elusive marketing challenges with Christine Crandell as guest host. Christine is a ubiquitous writer and speaker on sales and buying enablement topics, and has many years of C-level marketing leadership experience to back up her observations. Join us at http://www.tweetchat.com/room/MOFF at 1:30 p.m. PT, 4:30 p.m. ET to participate in this important and provocative online discussion.
Sales and Marketing: partners or foes? Aligned or dysfunctional? There is a wide continuum of perspectives as to what extent these functions should be aligned. Regardless of the degree to which Sales and Marketing functions may align, one common way to get them organized in order to function effectively is by having an explicit set of agreed MBOs (Management By Objectives, i.e. metrics and incentives).
Join this #MOFF TweetChat to explore the issues and potential solutions! (MOFF = Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field – join the MOFF LinkedIn Group
Discussion Questions:
Q1 Why do Sales & Marketing act like adversaries in many companies?
Q2 Why should Sales & Marketing work more closely together?
Q3 What are the implications if Sales & Marketing continue to operate in silos?
Q4 What does Marketing need to understand about Sales to align toward common goals?
Q5 What does Sales need to understand about Marketing to align toward common goals?
Q6 What metrics & incentives provide a common ground for Sales & Marketing?
Q7 What does an integrated approach to Sales & Marketing look like?
Q8 How do organizations ensure Sales & Marketing work toward the same goals?
Q9 What forces might impact our topic today in the near future?
Reference articles:
We’re All Marketers Now
Six Best-Practices to Improve Sales and Marketing Alignment
Why CEOs Can’t Blame Marketing or Sales for Lack of Alignment
Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment
Sales and Marketing Alignment
Guest-Host: Christine Crandell
Christine lives by three mottos: ‘Take your business personally’, ‘deliver high impactful results’ every day, and ‘stay outside the box’. Her experience includes roles as Board Advisor at Coupa Software, SVP-Marketing at Accept Software, genera, Ariba, and IPLocks, and Director of Strategic Marketing at Oracle. Christine has advised and worked with enterprise technology CEOs around the world on the opportunities and challenges that stand between them and success. Her expertise is in shaping successful business strategies, driving revenue through ecosystems, shaping emerging markets, and building world class organizations that are aligned to the buyer.
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/moff and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #MOFF hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
Join us for #MOFF TweetChats every Friday afternoon, 4:30 Eastern, 1:30 Pacific time. Continue the discussion on LinkedIn in the Marketing Operations Future Forum group
Click on pen to
October 6, 2011
Bridging the gap between seller and buyer is top-of-mind for me of late, as we prepare to launch the Marketing Operations Future Forum as a virtual consulting resource for executives and teams to resolve elusive marketing challenges. This week’s #MOFF TweetChat is at the heart of what Marketing Operations is trying to do differently to align selling process to the buyer’s journey, often initially in the form of marketing automation. We have a long way to go. Here’s a significant opportunity to demonstrate the importance of customer engagement and empowerment from first touch, not just talk about it. Join us in this TweetChat at 1:30 p.m. PT, 4:30 p.m. ET tomorrow to be part of the solution.
Are the perspectives of customers and marketers aligned throughout the buyer’s journey? Multiple channels can obscure marketers’ view of customers’ experiences, as the degree of integration across communications, platforms, and alliance partners creates exponential complexity and potential confusion. Listening effectively to customers throughout the stages of the buying process helps marketers sustain revenue growth by getting and keeping more customers. Join this #MOFF TweetChat to explore the issues and potential solutions!
(MOFF = Marketing Operations Future Forum, co-creating the future of the marketing ops field – join the MOFF LinkedIn Group)
Discussion Questions
Q1 What are the components of buyer’s journey?
Q2 How does marketing typically support the buyer’s journey?
Q3 What parts of the buyer’s journey are missing in marketing support?
Q4 How do multiple channels complicate the buyer’s journey?
Q5 How can marketing manage multi-channel customer experience?
Q6 What is the buyer’s journey post-purchase?
Q7 What can marketing do to improve customer retention?
Q8 What forces might impact our topic today in the near future?
Reference articles:
Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Customer Experience
Time to Harmonize Your Cross-Channel Customer Experience
Marketing Wins Strategic Clout by Managing Customer Experience
Guest Host: Mark Middlebrook is SVP & Client Experience Manager for City National Bank where he manages company-wide programs to improve the client experience through all product and service delivery channels and increase client loyalty. He is also the manager of the bank’s Interactive Marketing team, directing online strategy, social media and interactive marketing efforts to support the company’s online revenue goals. He is responsible for the bank’s public Web site, cnb.com, social media strategy, online & email marketing and the corporate intranet.
How do you participate?
Go to http://TweetChat.com/room/moff and sync it to your Twitter account. It automatically adds the #MOFF hashtag. When the question is posed begin your response with A1: for question 1 and A2: for question 2 etc. No answer is wrong! It is also more fun when you leave 30–40 characters for others to comment on your tweets: avoid punctuation, prepositions, articles, adjectives.
Join us every Friday afternoon, 4:30 Eastern, 1:30 Pacific time. Visit www.MOFutureForum.com, and continue the discussion on LinkedIn in the Marketing Operations Future Forum group
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