Podcast appearances and mentions of pam didner

Pam Didner, B2B marketing expert and author of The Modern AI Marketer, joins A. Lee Judge to break down why prompting, automation, and AI-driven workflows are now critical for marketers.She shares practical frameworks for individuals, teams, and enterprises - and explains why focusing on workflows (not tools) is the key to staying competitive.If you want real-world strategies to future-proof your marketing career in an AI-first world, this conversation is essential.Conversation points:Why prompting is now a core skill for marketers (not just a tech thing)How to automate repetitive marketing tasks with AIScaling AI across marketing teams without creating chaosWhy chasing AI news headlines wastes time, and what to focus on insteadHow Copilot, ChatGPT, and enterprise AI tools fit into future workflowsPractical frameworks for evolving your marketing career with AI0:00 - The AI News Overload & Introduction to Guest Pam Didner1:51 - Pam's New Book: AI for the Modern Marketer3:46 - B2B Focus & Who the Books Are For4:39 - Is Prompting Now a Core Marketing Skill?5:20 - Will Prompt Engineering Become a Marketing Job?8:12 - Scaling AI in Marketing: Individual, Team, and Enterprise Levels12:40 - Frameworks for Implementing AI & Marketing Workflow Automation15:41 - Automating Repetitive Tasks vs. Human Creativity19:25 - How to Keep Up (or Not) with the Rapid Pace of AI24:08 - Copilot vs. Other LLMs: Enterprise AI Tool Choices28:26 - Final Book Overview & Where to Connect with Pam A. Lee Judge is the creator and host of The Business of Marketing podcast.Please follow the podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform.This podcast is produced by Content Monsta - A leading producer of B2B Content.

Pam Didner is a B2B marketing consultant, fractional CMO, speaker, and author. With 20 years of experience in B2B marketing, she helps companies bridge the gap between technology and marketing to build seamless customer experiences and boost sales. Pam is also the author of The Modern AI Marketer book series, which includes The Modern AI Marketer in The GPT Era, The Modern AI Marketing: Guide to Gen AI Prompts, Effective Sales Enablement, and Global Content Marketing.  In this episode…  AI is still just an algorithm and isn't at the human intelligence level, yet many marketers provide generic inputs yielding subpar results. AI doesn't understand your brand story or target audience, so you must provide specific information for valuable results. How can you create winning AI prompts to elevate your brand? Generative AI expert and B2B marketer Pam Didner recommends customizing AI prompts to your brand goals. This includes creating detailed, context-rich prompts to guide AI to meaningful and actionable outputs. For instance, a strong prompt should include specifics such as target audience details, product descriptions, competitor insights, and the generated content's intended outcome. To maximize results, Pam suggests training AI systems on proprietary data sets, allowing you to develop custom bots that automate repetitive tasks, streamline workflows, and create consistent outputs.  In the latest episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris invites B2B marketing consultant Pam Didner to speak about engineering custom AI prompts for your business. Pam shares her recommended AI tools for image and content creation, how to overcome growth barriers, and the importance of treating your customers with dignity.

Pam Didner is a seasoned B2B Consultant, Speaker, Fractional CMO, Author, and Podcaster. Her extensive knowledge covers various areas such as strategic planning, account-based marketing, demand generation, and sales enablement.  She thrives on diving deep into the trenches with her clients. As a regular fractional CMO with 20 years of corporate experience spanning finance, accounting, manufacturing, operations, and marketing, she knows how corporations work.  As an accomplished business author, Pam has also written five business books: The Modern AI Marketer in the GPT Era, The Modern Marketer: Guide to Gen AI Prompts, The Modern AI Marketer, Effective Sales Enablement, Global Content Marketing. Pam has also launched her popular podcast B2B Marketing and More, which serves as a hub for industry insights and interviews in the B2B space.   During the show we discuss: Importance Of Connecting Sales And Marketing Teams And Effective Methods To Achieve This. Key Strategies To Align Sales And Marketing For Improved Results. Major Barriers To Growth When Sales And Marketing Teams Are Misaligned. Approaches For Companies To Overcome Challenges That Hinder Marketing And Sales Efforts. Challenges Companies Encounter When Attempting To Restart Stalled Revenue Growth And Solutions To Overcome Them. Initial Steps Companies Should Take To Revive Stagnant Sales And Marketing Efforts. Impact Of Short-Term Marketing Fixes On Long-Term Business Growth. Benefits Of A Well-Developed Customer Profile In Enhancing Marketing Effectiveness. Role Of Performance Metrics (KPI) In Evaluating The Success Of Marketing Strategies. Essential Elements Of An Effective Marketing Strategy In The Current Digital Landscape. Solutions For Companies Facing Limited Tools Or Resources In Tracking And Measuring Marketing Success.   Show resource/s: https://pamdidner.com/  

In this weeks' Scale Your Sales Podcast episode, my guest is Pam Didner. Pam is a seasoned B2B Consultant, Speaker, Fractional CMO, Author, and Podcaster. She has also written five business books” The Modern AI Marketer, Effective Sales Enablement, Global Content Marketing. Pam works closely with both sales and marketing teams to develop cohesive plans that align with overall business goals. In this episode of Scale Your Sales podcast, we explore the evolving world of sales, marketing, and AI with Pam Didner. She shares insights on transforming sales teams, the shifting buyer's journey, and the critical role of digital marketing. Drawing from her latest books on AI, she offers practical strategies for integrating AI into sales and marketing and emphasizes the importance of understanding buyers and aligning teams. Welcome to Scale Your Sales Podcast, Pam Didner.   Timestamps: 00:00 Discusses AI's Impact on Sales Teams and Marketing Strategies 05:42 Understanding jobs, hands-on training essential for tool use. 07:39 Sales leaders create inefficiencies with varied methodologies. 12:13 Great salespeople aren't always the extroverted talkers. 15:31 Understand and nurture prospects throughout buying journey. 17:49 Marketers struggle to capture attention amidst email overloads. 20:51 Understand audience and intent via data enrichment. 26:13 I admire Taylor Swift's hard work.   https://pamdidner.com/books/modern-ai-marketer-in-gpt-era/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/ https://www.instagram.com/pam_didner/ https://twitter.com/pamdidner   Janice B Gordon is the award-winning Customer Growth Expert and Scale Your Sales Framework founder. She is by LinkedIn Sales 15 Innovating Sales Influencers to Follow 2021, the Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Customer Experience Nov 2020 and 150 Women B2B Thought Leaders You Should Follow in 2021. Janice helps companies worldwide to reimagine revenue growth thought customer experience and sales. Book Janice to speak virtually at your next event: https://janicebgordon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/janice-b-gordon/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JaniceBGordon Scale Your Sales Podcast: https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/podcast More on the blog: https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/blog Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janicebgordon Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScaleYourSales   And more! Visit our podcast website https://scaleyoursales.co.uk/podcast/ to watch or listen.

Welcome to The Power Lounge! Today, dive into artificial intelligence in marketing with guest Pam Didner, a B2B consultant and author. Explore how companies like Google and Amazon use AI for recommendation engines and search optimization. Learn about generative AI tools like ChatGPT in creative fields such as copywriting. Pam shares insights on optimizing AI prompts for marketing, blending AI with human expertise. Discover the potential of AI agents in automating tasks, focusing on data quality and analyzing data for insights. Whether you're an AI enthusiast or a marketer, this episode offers practical insights for navigating AI and marketing.Connect with Pam:Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/Guest Instagram: Instagram (@pam_didner)Guest Website: Pam Didner B2B Speaker and ConsultantEpisode Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction00:52 - Skill and Gift Exploration for Success10:05 - Navigating Digital Tech: Pros and Cons15:43 - Task Efficiency: AI Agents for Automation18:51 - Empowering Education: Women and AI Knowledge22:34 - Crafting Headlines: Unveiling Essentials29:31 - Controversial OpenAI Public Offering32:23 - Vision of Tomorrow: Easing Today's Turmoil38:31 - Data for Enhanced Customer Engagement46:31 - Tailored Communication with Targeted Audiences52:08 - Human Touch: AI and Experienced Marketers53:59 - CrewAI: Enhancing Tech Company Functions01:02:40 - OutroQuote of the Episode:"Combine human creativity with AI precision for effective email subject lines."- Pam Didner"Avoid generic prompts; place it in the right context for meaningful impact."  - Pam DidnerSupport the show

Our old friend Leon rolls back another X feature and the haters go crazy. At the same time, X releases their Global Transparency Report (which is anything but transparent). The New York Times unveils a plan to sell audio subscriptions via Apple Music and Spotify. The boys aren't sure the plan has merit (uh, data concerns anyone?). And The Onion creates a membership program with a print newspaper at the center. Joe is very happy about this. Winners and losers include Tim Walz and LinkedIn's AI rollout. Rants and raves include new books from Brian Piper and Pam Didner and a Dreamforce appearance from John Mulaney. ----- This week's links: X and Blocked Users X's Global Transparency Report New York Times to Sell Pod Subs Why the Onion Launched a Membership Program Tim Walz's YouTube Show ----- This week's sponsor: Grow better, faster with Hubspot's all-in-one intuitive customer platform - Hubspot.com/ ------- Liked this show? SUBSCRIBE to this podcast on Spotify, Apple, Google and more. Catch past episodes and show notes at ThisOldMarketing.com. Catch and subscribe to our NEW show on YouTube. NOTE: You can get captions there. Subscribe to Joe Pulizzi's Orangeletter and get two free downloads direct from Joe. Subscribe to Robert Rose's newsletter at Experience Advisors.

Are you looking to make AI work for your small business? You have come to the right place. This week, our Small Business Matters podcast dives into AI with expert and author Pam Didner. Pam is a powerhouse in the marketing world. She's not just a marketing expert; she's a problem solver, a digital enthusiast, and a lover of all things tech. With a rich background in B2B marketing, Pam is a much sought-after keynote speaker and trainer for B2B marketing teams. She's the host of a popular podcast, B2B Marketing and More, where she dives into marketing strategies and trends that shape modern business. Pam's also the acclaimed author of three insightful books: Effective Sales Enablement, The Modern AI Marketer, and Global Content Marketing. Each book is a treasure trove of knowledge, offering practical advice and cutting-edge strategies for marketers everywhere. For any resources mentioned on the show today, please visit our show notes over at experian.com/smbmatters.   FOLLOW US   Threads | https://www.threads.net/@experianbis TikToks | https://www.tiktok.com/@experianb2b Twitter | https://twitter.com/experiansmb  Instagram | https://instagram.com/experianbis  Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/ExperianBusinessInfo Pinterest | https://www.pinterest.com/experianb2b LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/experian-business-information YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI5DU7EVNB_z5xst-Ncuk-g  

The B2B Marketing Exchange Podcast is back for Season 10, and hosts Klaudia Tirico and Kelly Lindenau are excited to get back on the mic to celebrate this milestone. To kick off the season, Klaudia sat down with Pam Didner, B2B marketing consultant, author, speaker and #B2BMX veteran, on the show floor in Scottsdale, Ariz. to talk all things go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Pam Dider hosted a lively Workshop at B2BMX in Scottsdale to provide attendees with the tools they need to develop a winning GTM strategy. During the conversation, Pam shared key takeaways from her session, emphasizing how critical it is to align product, sales and marketing teams by setting clear and specific objectives from the jump. The two also dove into key objectives such as: The critical role of content in GTM planning; The importance of delivering tailored content formats on the channels your audience frequents most; How to determine GTM objectives, timelines and goals that the whole team can rally around; andHow to get started with AI. Don't miss this lively, fun and thought-provoking conversation!RELATED LINKS: Learn more about Pam Didner here;Get all the information you need about our new event, B2BMX East, here;Register for B2BMX East using this special 15% off code just for our listeners: MXPOD15; andFollow us on LinkedIn and X.

This episode features Pam Didner, a B2B marketing consultant, author, speaker, and podcaster. Pam dives deep into the world of B2B marketing, sharing her expertise on how to bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams. She discusses the challenges faced by B2B companies, including creating a solid marketing plan, and offers valuable tips on website lead generation and content marketing strategies. Pam also highlights the importance of a well-designed website and reveals her secret strategies for client acquisition. You'll learn how Pam stays up-to-date with the latest marketing trends and gain practical advice to become a B2B marketing rockstar.

Pam Didner, renowned B2B sales and marketing expert, joins Forbes Riley on Forbes Factor to delve into seamless customer experiences, sales-marketing alignment, and the power of storytelling. Discover strategies to elevate your marketing efforts and navigate career transitions or personal challenges.

Pam Didner, renowned B2B sales and marketing expert, joins Forbes Riley on Forbes Factor to delve into seamless customer experiences, sales-marketing alignment, and the power of storytelling. Discover strategies to elevate your marketing efforts and navigate career transitions or personal challenges.

In this episode of "How To Sell More," host Mark Drager discusses B2B marketing with  expert Pam Didner. She unpacks the complexities of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and their importance in aligning sales and marketing teams. Pam's approach simplifies the concept of what makes a lead truly valuable, highlighting its impact on team synergy and conversion success. Key Takeaways:  The critical role of well-defined MQLs in linking sales and marketing efforts. Strategies for crafting content that resonates with and nurtures potential leads. The importance of balancing comprehensive marketing strategies with personalized touches. Pam brings a wealth of experience to our discussion, with over 20 years in various marketing roles. Not just an expert, Pam is a seasoned practitioner, the author of three books, and the voice behind the "B2B Marketing and More" podcast and YouTube channel. Her insights are invaluable for anyone in marketing, from beginners to veterans.  

A comprehensive discussion about the relationship between marketing and sales, covering topics such as storytelling in marketing, integrated marketing and the strategy behind successful sales enablement.Pam Didner has an impressive career history, which includes various roles at Intel, becoming a marketing professor, and then transitioning to becoming a sought-after marketing thought leader and keynote speaker. In this week's episode of Content Marketing, Engineered, Wendy and Pam discuss the importance of sales and marketing alignment, understanding your marketing bandwidth and boundaries, and what true, successful sales enablement actually looks like.ResourcesConnect with Pam on LinkedInConnect with Wendy on LinkedInRelated Article: Top 7 Topics for Sales + Marketing Alignment SessionsConnect with TREW Marketing Learn About TREW Marketing Order the book! Content Marketing, EngineeredConnect with WendyTREW Marketing is a strategy-first content marketing agency serving industrial companies that target highly technical buyers. With deep experience in electronics, test and automation, software, and engineering services, TREW Marketing helps clients build trust and generate demand. 

In this episode of Women in B2B Marketing, host Jane Serra interviews Pam Didner, an award-winning B2B marketing consultant, keynote speaker, and Fractional CMO at Glimpse. They discuss the importance of tangible and intangible impacts in marketing, with Pam emphasizing the need to balance both. Pam also shares her journey from accounting to marketing, stressing the importance of supportive mentors. The conversation covers the challenges of marketing in today's digital world, the need for strategic and adaptable approaches, and the importance of understanding a company's business model and aligning marketing efforts accordingly. Pam and Jane discuss:delivering tangible and Intangible Valuehow to demonstrate marketing ROI in the context of sales revenuethe need for every marketer to be a CRM marketeradapting email marketing strategiesrunning win back campaigns for dormant accounts making ROI fun to align sales and marketing teamsthe power of the PAUSE - why marketers should take time to think when things are not workingcurrent challenges faced by B2B marketersunderstanding the why behind decisions before diving into the howKey Links:Guest: Pam Didner - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/Host: Jane Serra - https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeserra/ Pam Didner Consulting & Speaking - https://pamdidner.com/

Take control of your path and seize the moment with purposeful decisions and actions. You have three interconnected pieces at your disposal to overcome obstacles and create positive transformation while striving towards your goals.  Our esteemed guests share their knowledge and experience #ActingToPlan with intention: Bew White, Executive Chairman of Summer Classic/Gabby; Erik Holmberg, President at Nauvatis; Kiley Peters, Founder at RAYNE IX; Chris Michel, Founder and Author of “The Red Chair Experience”; Julie Perkins, Founder at Wyseminds; Mickey Kennedy, President at eReleases; and Pam Didner, Founder at Relentless Pursuits. The three interplaying parts discussed in this program are: Accept what has really happened. Your grand experiment. Discern the necessary work. Start from any of these three, and you can increase your ability to adapt as you go and communicate clearly — all while facing uncertainty and even fear. In this program, the experience and expertise are shared to illustrate the power behind accepting what has happened, your grand experiment, and doing the necessary work.  Also, you will begin to understand that your journey will differ from others, even though some underlying business models, purposes, and processes are similar. Embrace your values, commit to doing all the necessary work possible, and be intentional. —----------------- If you want to continue to look for inspiration to creatively or innovatively approach decision-making and problem-solving, use the experiences of other business owners who have created great companies.  Try Fast Track Your Business today to keep learning and growing and stay intentional as you work strategically on your business. -------------------- You can get in touch with Jess Dewell on Twitter,  LinkedIn or Red Direction website.

Pam Didner is a marketing consultant, writer, speaker, podcaster, and author of 3 books: Global Content Marketing, Effective Sales Enablement, and the Modern AI Marketer.  She has given future trends, content marketing and sales enablement presentations and workshops in the US, Europe, South America and Asia. Her forte is to create successful global marketing plans that meet local marketing and sales team's needs. She is strategic in nature and tactical in execution. She also specializes in sales, marketing and internal/external communications consulting, keynote presentations, corporate training and planning sessions. Her clients include Intel, 3M, Sunstar, Cisco, TE Connectivity, Southwest Airlines to name just a few. She shares marketing thoughts at pamdidner.com. Learn More About Pam - Click Here

Join Dots Oyebolu as he speaks with Pam Didner, Sales Enablement and Content Marketing Keynote Speaker and Workshop Coach at Relentless Pursuit.Account-based marketing (ABM) is the best way forward for every B2B revenue-producing team that wants to grow long-term.But what makes ABM different from traditional marketing efforts?Today, Pam discusses ABM best practices that make scaling a business inevitable.Highlights include:- How a background in finance has helped Pam in her marketing career.- Why marketers need to be collaborating with sales teams, instead of working in silos.- Defining ABM and how it can be successful at scale.- The pros and cons when it comes to developing a scalable strategy.- The types of things you should avoid when you're investing in an ABM strategy.- General rules for how to think about segmenting customers and accounts.- Recommended CRM tools that make ABM a better process.- Top 3 KPIs for ABM and why.Resources mentioned:- Pam Didner | LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/- Pam Didner | Websitehttps://pamdidner.com/services/account-based-marketing-abm/- Relentless Pursuithttps://www.linkedin.com/company/pamdidner/- Momentum ITSMAhttps://momentumitsma.com/dos-and-donts-for-building-a-successful-strategic-abm-program/- Uplandhttps://uplandsoftware.com/kapost/resources/blog/account-based-marketing-plan/Thanks for listening to the Marketing Leadership podcast, brought to you by Dots Loves Marketing. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review to help get the word out about the show. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation.#PodcastSEO #PerformanceMarketing #PodcastAds #MarketingStrategy #MarketingIntelligence #PaidMedia

Endings are often overlooked. We can push project dates and modify results expectations much easier than calling for a full-stop to review. It is easy to jump right into tactics to get results, yet we typically desire an overarching goal: more of something or a change to the way something is. Whether a product launch, your business' story, or breaking into a new market, the less clarity there is, the less likely you are to know when you've reached the desired outcome. It's important to review and assess the plan, the actions selected, and the results to decide whether to continue or modify things. We must identify that we've arrived, even in a very different way. In this episode, you will hear about the importance of milestones to mark your progress, how endings are the starting point, and that we rarely follow a direct path from the execution of the plan to achieving the objective.  Jess Dewell hosts Pam Didner, Founder of Relentless Pursuit, LLC, and Mickie Kennedy, President at eReleases, to discuss why it is BOLD to reflect on how endings help us thrive.  —--------- If you want to continue to look for inspiration to creatively or innovatively approach decision-making and problem-solving, use the experiences of other business owners who have created great companies. Try Fast Track Your Business today to keep learning and growing, and to stay intentional as you work strategically on your business. -------------------- Feel like you need a bit of help with some business direction? Then ACT to Plan by contacting Jess for a Business Base Camp Consultation. You'll discuss your aims, where you are, and where you should be to move deliberately toward your team-building goals! -------------------- If you want to stay informed and plan for a successful year, download the Annual Red Direction Business Management Report and get access to survey findings and information to help navigate volatility and uncertainty.  You can get in touch with Jess Dewell on Twitter,  LinkedIn or the Red Direction website.

In today's world of digital-first strategies, applying AI to your marketing efforts may be just what you've been looking for. But as AI technology is becoming increasingly accessible, it's important to approach its implementation thoughtfully and strategically. In this episode, we listen to Pam Didner, global content marketing strategist, speaker and author, share insights, practical tips and best practices for applying AI to your work routine. During her session at the B2B Marketing Exchange earlier this year, she discussed the proper role of AI in marketing.Tune in to learn: The impact of ChatGPT on B2B marketers; The four ways to incorporate AI into your marketing; The importance of having a buttoned-up AI workflow; and Practical examples of using AI to your audience's benefit, not just your own. RELATED LINKS Learn more about Pam and her work here! Check out our perspective on how AI is reshaping the industry. Make sure to save your seat for #B2BSMX, coming up this August! Use code XYZ123 to get XX% off your early bird ticket.

Pam Didner and host George B. Thomas get into all things go-to-market, including understanding the scope of your campaign, researching your audience, and listening to your peers--all of which are ongoing processes.

Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing and More with Pam Didner. I haven't done a lot of episodes lately. That's because I was busy writing a novel! Yes, I'm writing a novel. I will tell you more little later in a different episode. However, for this episode, I have a special guest for you, Agnes Fotino O'Connell, a Director of Sales Operations & Demand Generation for HMI Performance Incentive. We met at the B2BMX Conference in February. Agnes came to my workshop, and we hit it off right there. At that time, I was talking about sales enablement. Agnes told me that's something she's been doing for quite some time now. So, I invited Agnes to my podcast to talk specifically about a couple of things: how to better support sales and how to align sales and marketing for demand generation success.

Pam Didner: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing and More with Pam Didner. Yay. I haven't done a lot of episodes lately. That's because I was busy, I don't know, writing a novel! Yes, I'm writing a novel. I will tell you more little later in a different episode, but today I have a special guest for you and she is a Director of Demand Generation for HMI Performance Incentive. And she is Agnes Fotino O'Connell. Hey Agnes, so happy to have you here.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: Pam, I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.   Pam Didner: Yes, and we met at the B2B MX in February. Agnes came to my workshop and we had a great time. We hit it off right there, and at that time I was talking about sales enablement, and Agnes told me specifically that that's something that she has been doing and also is doing it. So that's why I invited Agnes to the podcast to talk about specifically couple things, how to better support sales and also better supporting sales through demand gen. Before we get started, Agnes, talk to us about your job and also what does your company do?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: Yeah, sure. HMI Performance Incentives is a leading incentive strategy company, helping companies with a broad spectrum of needs and challenges, motivate both their direct and indirect sales teams, customers, et cetera, to meet sales goals, increase loyalty, change behaviors, and everything else that you come to know and love about customer loyalty and incentive strategies.   Pam Didner: If I'm not mistaken, I think the incentive program that you set up is very much tailored for channel partners, such as the wholesalers working directly with their distributors and the dealers and the value-added resellers, assisting integrators. It's basically kind of like a channel marketing tools and then that you use that to incentivize and a lot of channel partners to reach the sales goal. Can you give us a very specific example about that?     Agnes Fotino O'Connell: Yeah, sure. We might work with a large wholesaler. Let's say they were in the building material space. They're a company that's trying to go after the contractor or the dealer, and we'd help them do a couple things.  One, we'd help them create a customer loyalty program that might go after what we call the “middle 60” of customers, that group that is always with you, you know what to expect out of them. And then might also help target their top 20% of their customers--the customers that bring 80% of their business, typically. And we might put together some form of group incentive travel trip for those top customers, helping build a moat about around them, helping them diffuse from competition taking them, and again, help grow that middle 60 to do more than they've historically done with them.   Pam Didner: So it is whatever your customer want to incentivize and you build a program and you are able to track the performance and then be able to, uh, award whoever reached that specific target.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell You're spot on, Pam, for an incentive marketing agency.   Pam Didner: Very, very good. So then talk to us now, you have told us specifically in terms of what your company has done. Your role is a Director of demand gen, and I remember when I was talking to you and you said you've been on the sales side, you've been on the marketing side. Before I talked to you about demand gen, can you talk to us a little bit about being on the sales side, being on the marketing side for any B2B marketers would like to supporting sales?  Do you have any specific tips, trick, or advice?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: I think you have to just really understand what's important to the sales folks at a myriad of levels. Right. And Pam, I actually think you gave some really amazing advice during your workshop at the B2B MX on. About, you know, finding your sales advocates, right? Finding those folks who are gonna help you make an imprint, make a case study of what you wanna accomplish as a marketer. You really have to go put your trust in sales' hands and help-- really help them help you get the job done. So what I like to say is, you know, go find that top salesperson and make them your advocate.  Show them how your campaign--whatever you wanna roll out as a marketer--is gonna make them successful. Get them on board, and then go find someone maybe more in the middle, right? Someone who's meeting and exceeding their KPIs, uh, but is maybe not a rock star. And then onboard them onto your plan. And then when you have, you know, those two or four, six people on board, you're gonna be pretty untouchable with whatever you try to roll out to your sales work.   Pam Didner: So the bottom line is really, really get to know them. And it started with a small group of people might be your ally. Build your own tribe try first and show them what kind of value you would add, and then take it from there step by step.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell As marketers, we talk so much about trialing, right, and piloting and looking at data.  And I think a lot of times marketers forget to do that internally. You know, we only tend to look at doing that externally, and it's kinda like, “Hey, take a moment, pause, pilot internally, see what the reaction is, and then go run that external.”   Pam Didner: Love it. Love it. With that being said, I'm gonna touch the next topic demand gen. So demand generation is hard. I mean, I've been doing demand generation myself. I mean even actually try to build my own pipeline; that is hard. Not to mention that you work for a company and you have to sell products. And the many B2B marketers I have talked to a lot of time, they actually have a demand gen targets like a monthly basis.  It's actually very, very hard. Do you have any kinda like a holy grail or any kind of campaigns or anything that you do to actually help people to understand what they can do to better optimize their marketing campaigns?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: That's a great question and it's a loaded one at that. You know, I think right now we've moved away from a lot of what I would call short-term KPIs and we're really looking at the long tail and--   Pam Didner: So can you clarify that? Sorry to interrupt. What is the short term KPI versus the long tail? Can you be very specific about it?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: In our business, we have a long selling cycle, like hopefully most B2B marketers are experiencing right now. Yeah, we're, we're talking about 18 to 24 month sales cycles on the long end of it, really high end, high dollar value amounts. So for me, looking at monthly MQLs is really not a great output of what we're gonna expect in that quarter.  For us, we're spending a lot of our time and attention looking at thought leadership, the sorts of downloads, the sorts of referral traffic that we're getting from that. If we can get pings on how that's coming up in conversations, how people are leveraging what we're putting out, there is our best metric right now to understand.  We tend to not look at as much leads per month--net new MQLs--we're really looking at is our thought leadership content creating opportunities.   Pam Didner: So does that mean that a lot of your metrics that you are responsible is tied to, say, pipeline opportunity driven?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: 100% of our metrics.   Pam Didner: What do you do to quantify that pipeline opportunity through say, referral traffic or through like a thought leadership content? Because I feel there's a gap there is in terms of like the content consumption and the leadership play, and all of sudden there's a pipeline activity, so there's a gap right there and how do you connect that gap and bring that content consumption or thought leadership play down?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: We're doing something very simple, which is capturing it at opportunity state--essentially understanding from the salesperson's perspective how and why did this opportunity turn into a deal? And we're asking them in the opportunity form to state it. And it's really interesting the amount of people that are essentially saying, “Hey, I feel like this was demand gen oriented for these couple of reasons.” So our goals are to have essentially 50% of our opportunities be self-validated from sales saying this was demand gen who helped me create this.” And then you can start to look backwards in the customer file, if you will, or in the contact card to understand where did they first come into our database? When did they start to engage with us? And then when did they turn into an opportunity? I think the future state is really looking at those three moments in time in identifying is demand generation, at least a portion responsible for those important turns.   Pam Didner: I love you identify the three moments as when they come in and when they probably become the opportunities. So based on your experience and the working backwards.  What are some of the channel, from your perspective, is most common to capture that moment that possibly can train into pipeline opportunity? What kind of campaign tactics tend to drive to that specific point?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: For us, it's a lot of referral traffic from third party subject matter experts, and I can give you an example. If we see that a contact is constantly attending one of our subject matter expert partner's webinars on a certain topic that we're sponsoring, it's essentially a form of intent data, right? Yeah. It's so we're able to start to aggregate, “okay, there's something here, right? Their, their ears are up, they're looking for something in this. Can we start to feed them a more aggregated, essentially marketing plan of and around that topic?” And then can we start to create a conversation essentially using ABM tied to that?   Pam Didner: Yep. That makes a lot of sense. So you actually watch data like a hawk, I assume.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: Yes, we're a small team and we're feisty at that. So you know, when you have a small team--as I'm sure a lot of B2B marketers can relate to right now--data's your best friend. I mean, to go do things at scale is you have to be data driven right now.   Pam Didner: I 100% agree. So can you talk to us about what some of the tools that you use to actually unravel some of the key insights?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell For us right now, we're pretty excited about our tech stack. I think a lot of things are kind of coming back in style right now. You know, at B2B MX, we heard a lot about direct mail. We're trying to add a few different tools for that into our marketing stack right now to try and understand behaviors; we have two instances of intent data formally stood up, one at the top of the funnel and one at the bottom of the funnel using our friends at Rollworks. We're also trying to find a partner for more of that middle intent data where we just have some listening out in the universe. We're big advocates of HubSpot. We use them for both our CRM and our marketing automation. On the send standpoint, we've just set up an integration with a very cool tool called Hand Write, which is sending out, uh, handwritten notes from our sales team after they meet in person, automated at a conference.  So we're able to track that. It'll have a QR code to send them to some of our resources put on it, as well as a QR to their business card that we can track on the back end. We're doing obviously a ton with QR codes and trying to leverage that as another source of intent data. You know, we're played around with Gong as a great marketing tool, which you know, for your listeners is an incredible sales tracking tool that listens in, using machine learning and AI to sales calls. It's a marketing tool. Yeah, it's a marketing tool. So we've started to leverage a bit of the insights that that provides us. But at the end of the day, it's really putting people right now to look at those moments in time that were training opportunities and then trying to scale those moments.   Pam Didner: So you brought up a lot of tools. A lot of marketers are overwhelmed because they feel they have to add a different tool at a different stages. And all a sudden, your Martech stack becomes pretty complicated. And I think to some extent that's inevitable. You have to use a different tool at a different time, and there's no one tool that fits all. And also, depending on what kind of campaigns you are running and different channels, you might need to use the different listening tools, as well. So that I want to make sure everybody understand that. When Agnes was talking about different tools that she needs to use, that's probably based on the process or the workflow or the marketing channels that she is utilizing. You have to kind of understand and to talk to the vendors and see if that actually fit your own Martech stack or your own workflow. So it may fit, it may not. But make a note of that, understand what those tools will do, and then you can make a decision if that actually works for you.  So for longest time, When I listened to a tool, I said, “oh my God, Agnes, you used that tool. You know what, I probably should use it too, right?” But then later I found out I need to evaluate that tool first before I can determine if that actually applies to me. But, uh, there was a period of time I was like, “you know what? Everybody's using it, I should do.” But that's not necessary the case. So I wanna make sure you understand that? Go ahead, Agnes.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: If I can, you know, it's something I'm passionate about. I love giving people the next tool sort of recommendations. And something I'm coming outta, actually just yesterday with one of my team members is essentially a Martech stack audit.   Pam Didner: Audit?  OK got it.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: We look at how are all of our systems working together, and if you don't already have a flywheel of this, I would look at it and it's gonna become, hopefully it becomes a pretty complex flywheel because your different tools will speak to one another and you should draw that out. So just start drawing dotted lines or hard lines if it's a very strong integration. And then you'll be able to show and explain internally how everything works, which is really helpful for both your team, but also the sales team, right? To show them, “Hey, here's how everything can work together. Here's what you can use, here's what I can use, here's what we can both use.” And then what you could layer on top of that is where different tools layer in. So, for example, you could start to augment that flywheel to show here's what we're using at a lead level. Here's what we're using at an MQL level. Here's what we're using at an SQL level. Here are tools that we use everywhere. And then you can start a part of this maybe ongoing deck is how I do it, at least, that's updated, that are, “hey, here are some tools that are not the right fit for us right now, but I've evaluated, I understand their pricing and I understand what they can do.” And then you just put a slide in for them with some of your raw notes.  That way when a gap does come up, you're not scrambling trying to go on G2 or wherever you might go for your insights, it's, “oh, I think I already did something there, or let me see if I've already evaluated that.” Flip through your deck and it's waiting for you.   Pam Didner: I love it. So do you have that flywheel you can share with us?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: Yeah, I can send it out after this. I would love that.   Pam Didner: And I would actually add that to the video. Yeah. And uh, so people can see it.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell Yeah, I'm happy to.   Pam Didner: Yay. I love it. So, last question: now you've been working on the both sales and marketing side. Have you have any advice for anyone who are interested, kind of moving back and forth between sales and marketing, you know, any kind of career advice that you have for them?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell My first thought would be do both, and I truly stand behind that and I don't just stand behind, I put it in action. I've put up and stood up a program at HMI that is the HMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Program that allows young grads to come in and, and see and experience both sides of the house, everything from biz dev to field marketing, to social, to digital and so on. But I, you know, I think it's really important your trajectory to understand how hard both roles are. It's an amazing skillset to understand what it's like to go, you know, do the role of a biz dev, making those 50-100 calls every day. And I will say in turn, you understand then, and I think have a higher level of appreciation for when you need those marketing assets at your disposal to send out how great those are to have and how to design them to be a better fit for not only the actual salespeople using them, but to the recipients. So, do both if you can. It'll make you a, I think a more well-rounded individual going into either your sales or marketing career on whatever side that you end up. Or you could be like me and just maybe hover somewhere in the middle, if you find an organization that will let you.   Pam Didner: Well said, I really have nothing to add except I don't do two at the same time, but try each one of them in different time. So you really don't want to be Michelle Yeoh. Like be everywhere, anytime at the same time (laughs).     Agnes Fotino O'Connell: I couldn't agree.   Pam Didner: So one last fun question. So what show are you binge watching right now?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: I've been watching a bit of “Top Chef,” but the really old seasons of Gordon Ramsey, which has been fun and “Hell's Kitchen.”  But I'm, I'm reading some really good books right now, Pam, if you're interested.   Pam Didner: What is it?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: I'm rereading Thinking Fast and Slow, which I think it's the best. And then for a fun book, reading, When Life Gives You Lululemons.   Pam Didner: Love it.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: What are you reading, Pam?   Pam Didner: Oh, I'm reading (laughs) . I'm reading a drama. This is very dark. Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects.  My God, it's so dark.  After I read it, I was like, “you know what? I'm actually getting a little depressed.”   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: Maybe a light book after thus, huh?     Pam Didner: Yeah, exactly. But that was like, I'm reading right now. I'm actually reading more and more fictional. I got away from the business reading in the past two years. I guess I just need to take a break after 10 years. It was like, you know, “I'm done. Lemme read some fictional book.” Anyway. Hey, Agnes, it's wonderful to have you. You share a lot of insight and by the way, it was so wonderful, so wonderful to meet you at my workshop. Such a great, great addition to have you at my workshop. We had a great time, right?   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: We sure did.  Cannot recommend going to both B2B MX—I'll give them a bit of a shout out cause that was a really excellent conference--but also if you have an opportunity to get to one of Pam's. workshops. It was incredible. Truly lucky to sit in her grace there for like two and a half, three hours. You don't get a lot of those opportunities to learn like that from a marketing expert.  Amazing Pam.   Pam Didner: I actually pay Agnes to say that. (both laugh) Just kidding. Just kidding. But I'm actually doing a workshop, a very similar one about sales enablement and how the marketing sales op, Biz op, even, uh, marketing ops, how what you can do to better support sales in a changing environment, Ignite Chicago on May 23rd. So if you are interested, check that out or reach out to me. And by the way, bring any questions, uh, to the workshop. I do answer them. Seriously, I do.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell: The entire time. She answers them the entire time. It's amazing.   Pam Didner: Alright. Hey Agnes, it's wonderful, wonderful to have you here. Wish you best of luck and keep us posted about all the stuff that you are doing and come back next time.   Agnes Fotino O'Connell Thanks Pam, I appreciate it.   Pam Didner: If you want to see Agnes' flywheel, look in this episode's show notes or visit my website at pamdidner.com/podcasts, episode 226.  

Where can you start on getting a full sales enablement function? How can marketers get to grips with what sales actually need? How can you create a content marketing strategy that delivers genuine value to your customers? Head of content David Rowlands put all these questions and more to Pam Didner – founder of Relentless Pursuit, author, and speaker at Ignite USA. On this episode, Pam teases some of the key learnings from her workshop on how marketing and marketing ops can support sales in a changing environment, from rethinking your content strategy to making sure you're speaking the same language. Ignite USA attendees will access all of Pam's sales support know-how in her workshop. To secure your spot to the biggest B2B event, click here: https://events.b2bmarketing.net/igniteusa/2755591?&utm_source=editorial&utm_medium=cta&utm_campaign=ignite_usa&utm_term=episode_84:_pam_didner_on_how_you_can_better_support_sales

 Find out what you are doing wrong that's stopping you from getting qualified leads all the time Learn the importance of understanding first how you define leads before moving forward Understand why communication and alignment are essential between the sales and marketing team Resources/Links: Want FREE tools on how you can increase your revenue with alignment? Click here: https://pamdidner.com/ Summary Do you want to learn how you can generate multiple sustainable qualified leads all the time by creating the perfect lead generation plan? Marketing and sales aren't so different, so there's no reason for you to prioritize one over the other. There are two things you need to remember before going into the big game of getting leads– you've got to define and align! Pam Didner is a B2B marketer, writer, and podcaster. She works with clients on B2B marketing and sales and marketing alignment. She loves everything B2B marketing! Dig a little deeper into the world of lead generation with Pam and learn how you can craft the perfect plan for you and your business that can guarantee you less miscommunication and great sustainable leads all the time. Check out these episode highlights: 01:31 - Pam's ideal client: My ideal client tends to be B2B marketers in the MET companies or the enterprises that actually either work with a sales team directly or work very closely in terms of demand generation. 02:05 - The problem she helps solve: There are a couple of things I do in working with my clients. Number one is the sales and marketing alignments. And that also touches a little bit on the demand generation, because you are bringing leads into your funnel, and you have to think through in terms of how to qualify the leads or nurture leads. 03:42 - The symptoms of the problem: One of the common issues is the definition of leads, especially MQL, which is "marketing qualified leads" and otherwise sales qualified leads. And a lot of companies actually use lead scoring to determine marketing qualified leads. 04:54 - Clients' common mistakes before consulting Pam: In terms of, if you are doing a demand generation, at the same time you're passing the leads to salespeople, but they are not necessarily happy with your leads, it's very important to initiate that conversation with them. 05:55 - Pam's Valuable Free Action (VFA): The number one thing is, if you feel this gap, it's very important that you have a very frank conversation with multiple different salespeople to understand what those gaps are. 06:50 - Pam's Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Want FREE tools on how you can increase your revenue with alignment? Click here: https://pamdidner.com/ 07:25 - A: The number one question is, in terms of how the sales team gets the sales feedback in terms of working with a marketing team. Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode: “Once you create a demand generation plan, make sure that you review that with the sales team.” -Pam DidnerClick To Tweet Transcript (Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast) Tom Poland 00:10 Greetings, everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I'm Tom Poland beaming out to you from the Sunshine Coast in Australia, joined today by Pam Didner. Pam, good day from Down Under. Where are you hanging out? Pam Didner 00:21 I'm actually in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. Tom Poland 00:26 North Carolina, and you've just been through the midterms. Did you get the candidate you wanted elected? Pam Didner 00:35 Well, actually, it worked out pretty well. This is why the color purple stay and which is the combination of both parties and at this time, it's actually, it did pretty well. Tom Poland 00:46 All right.

Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. While enablement has recently emerged as a formal business function over the last several years, the idea of enabling sellers to succeed has existed in businesses for a long time. As the function of enablement has become more solidified in recent years, selling as a profession has also undergone a lot of change. Inevitably this means that enablement will continue to evolve alongside those changes. Pam Didner, the author of Effective Sales Enablement is here to talk to us a little bit about some of those core concepts from her book about where enablement has historically been and how organizations can lean on enablement to overcome some of those challenges that they may face in the future. So with that, Pam, I’d love to hear a little bit about yourself and tell us a little bit more about your book. Pam Didner: Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to be part of your podcast. My name is Pam Didner and I am a B2B marketer, writer, and podcaster. I love anything and everything related to B2B marketing. I worked in the corporate setting for almost 20 years doing many things actually from finance, accounting, product management, even operations, and content marketing all the way down to global marketing where I created a strategy for a lot of geographies for the content marketing teams. I worked on the global strategy so they can create their go-to-market plan. I wrote a book about effective sales enablement and it’s really about what a B2B marketer should do to better support their sales team. OF: Fantastic. Well, Pam, thanks so much for being here. What I really loved about your book is you spent some time walking through the history of sales enablement and you talk in the book about how acts of enabling sellers, whether or not that’s been called sales enablement, have actually existed for a long before the term was actually coined and the formal discipline was formed. I’d love to hear your perspective on what some of those ways were that enablement initiatives have historically existed in organizations. PD: Yeah, I’d love to share that. I wrote a whole chapter about that. For a long time selling goods and services was not complicated because our lives were not complicated. You know, we buy food, we farm and we go to sleep. It’s not complicated, but then things changed dramatically after the Industrial Revolution, especially the invention of the steam engine. That literally changed everything because now we can use steam engines to power almost everything. People started building complicated machines using steam engines to automate things and make our lives a whole lot more efficient. For example, we started using steam engines to build trains, right? Think about it. Steam engines are pretty complicated machines then trains are also pretty complicated, so we are building a complicated device on top of a complicated device. Now all of a sudden you have to explain those complicated devices in a way that the buyers can understand. For the longest time, we used horses to transport us. Then the train was invented, but nobody has ever seen a train before. You have to explain what the train will do. Then all of a sudden the people who are selling the train need to be educated in terms of what the train will do and then be able to explain how the train will function. That by itself or in essence, it’s a sales enablement, even though the term was not created or coined back in the 1900s. So really, if you think about it, for the longest time ever since the early 1900s, we were building more and more complicated devices on top of complicated devices. Now, the salespeople’s job is actually trying to sell those complicated devices. They need to be educated. They need to be trained. They need to know their products well. Things changed dramatically in the 1980s. The reason is we invented the computer. Computers actually existed way before that, but the personal computer started to become very popular. Way back then it was like ‘what is a computer, what can a computer do?' The computer was at that time really doing a very complex calculation on behalf of humans. We never ever imagine that the computer can do whatever they are doing now almost like 30 years later. We cannot imagine that, so way back then when people invented computers, especially IBM, they were like okay what does a computer do? I mean it’s literally the machine that is being enclosed inside and then people walk around and see what these things do? The IBM sales professional needed to actually understand what the computer will do and then educate the buyers about its benefit and its features of it. They coined the term sales enablement according to Wikipedia, and I’m not surprised they actually coined that term. It’s really about training sales so they can understand the complicated products they are selling and how to explain that in a way the buyers can understand. So initially sales enablement was really about sales training and sales onboarding. I think the term has been expanded. It’s almost like everything that sales are doing and that needs to be supported can be cold sales enablement. OF: I think that’s very true and just how much enablement has expanded in its definition and organizations over the last few years. I love what you also talked about around the innovation and the business landscape and even all the way back to the industrial revolution, but really how these sales trends have been impacting selling as a profession over even just the last few decades. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. What are some of the ways that sales organizations have evolved in recent years? PD: Great question. Remember I mentioned earlier that salespeople need to be trained when they sell complicated products? In a way, the evolution of sales has a lot to do with technological evolutions and also technological advancement. The complexity of a product actually does have a huge impact in terms of the evolution of sales and also how people conduct the selling process and engagement, but there’s another important element which is the buyer’s purchasing behavior. How buyers purchase any products, especially B2B products, will impact how salespeople sell. For example, the internet, digital media, and even the pandemic have impacted how buyers purchase or behave, therefore massively impacting how salespeople or sales organizations evolve. For example, for the longest time, salespeople have visited their clients several times to close the deals and they had to be present. With the virtual meetings and the pandemic in the past couple of years, sales engagement with clients has evolved even sales hiring. Do we need to hire people on the ground that should be near our client base? I don’t know, maybe that has changed. From my perspective, as I said, the complexity of a product can impact the evolution of sales and the other one is the buyer’s behavior. Another important factor I mentioned in my book is millennials they are joining the sales force and are digital natives. The way they need to be supported, trained, and communicate with will be very, very different from the previous generation of a sales force. If you are supporting both generations, how should you support them? The evolution of a sales engagement will be dramatically different depending on the age of the sales team as well. OF: Yeah, I think that’s such an important point around the generations in the workforce and how their expectations and how they are wired to interact with customers is different. I think that’s so important to take that into consideration. PD: I totally agree. For example, a lot of millennials prefer texting, so the way they communicate with the buyers is actually through texting, but the older generation prefers email and they prefer talking to them, picking up the phone, and having a conversation. Because the communication mechanism is so different, the way that you need to train those people needs to be different as well. OF: I couldn’t agree more on that point. Looking ahead to the next few years, what are some of your predictions for how selling will continue to evolve? PD: You know, I hate making predictions. Selling, especially technology selling, is going to get even more complicated and that just affects. The biggest challenge from my perspective, moving forward is to find a way to explain complex ideas or the product in simple terms that your buyers will understand. That sounds like this age-old challenge, but I’m telling you many companies have not solved that. The messaging, such as what to say and how to say about your product, will continue to challenge the sales product and marketing team. I don’t think that will ever stop. The other one is that the buyer’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter. I am the guilty one as well. So we need to think about the types of content and outreach communication to get their heads turning. So what can we do so that it’s not creepy? The buyer knows that you are virtually stalking them, but how can you communicate and reach out to them? It’s not like you know that I’m following you every step. That, in terms of how to understand them and communicate with them yet not be creepy, will be also a knowledge challenge that from my perspective that those people will face in the next couple of years. Another thing is technology will continue to play a critical role in helping sales and unraveling buyers' intent. There are a lot of tools out there to actually help you understand if the buyer is ready to buy, what is their intention, and whether are they apprehensive to buy. Sales professionals, along with the marketing team will continue to evaluate different kinds of tools they need and incorporate that into their sales stages. The key thing is the more tools that you incorporate into the sales stages, the more tools that salespeople need to learn and they hate that. So how you get your sales team motivated to learn more about the new tools can also be challenging. Did I depress everybody now? OF: No, those are very, very great points and they’re very real. I mean those are challenges that I absolutely think are prevalent today in a lot of organizations. I think it will continue to persist, especially as there’s so much change happening in the business landscape and economic uncertainty right now. I think every point that you just mentioned is absolutely spot on. With that in mind, one of the things that you do mention in the book is that one of the core purposes of enablement, from your perspective, is really to increase sales velocity. With all of this change that organizations and that sellers are experiencing right now, how can enablement really help organizations not only maintain but improve sales velocity? PD: That’s a great question. The key thing is you need to set up sales enablement success metrics. Let's assume increasing sales velocity is very important for the sales team. Then you need to define what sales velocity is and you need to incorporate that as a part of your success metrics. So that’s number one. Now, let's assume that the sales velocity is an increased conversion rate, and let's assume that’s your definition of yours. Now, you need to think through what the sales enablement team is doing as a part of your job to actually increase that conversion rate. Are you training your sales team faster when a new product is launched, literally two weeks before the product is launched, you have training ready and everybody is educated and onboarded. That can increase sales conversion through training and arming them with the data they need. Maybe the other one is to give them enough content at different sales stages so they know what kind of content they should use at the different sales stages. That’s also another way to showcase that you are increasing sales conversion. You need to determine what you are doing as part of your success metrics and you need to define what sales velocity means to you and also to the sales team and then make a decision to quantify. A lot of things can be very abstract. It’s very hard to directly say that is the sales enablement contribution, but you can basically make a percentage and make sure that the salespeople agree with that or you can determine your deliverables in a way that the sales team agrees with that and use that to quantify your contribution to increase the sales velocity. OF: Absolutely. I think defining what that means for your organization as the first step is a fantastic point. That was great advice. In thinking ahead as well, I know you said you don’t like to make predictions, but alongside some of those predictions that you did lay out with some of the challenges that sales organizations will continue to experience over the next couple of years, I’d love to hear your take on where you think enablement is going as a function. How do you think enablement will continue to mature and evolve alongside some of those larger-scale changes in the business landscape over the next few years? PD: Let me answer that a little bit differently as well. I think the maturity of an organization in terms of setting up the sales enablement function is going to be different from company to company. I just want to make that very clear and there’s no best practice that will apply to all companies. I think it’s very, very important that each company looks inward to evaluate its own processes and tools. There are things that salespeople always complain about, especially when they are not getting the support they need. For example, the number one reason that salespeople complain the most that I’m aware of is, ‘I don’t know where the content is, I cannot find the content when I need it'. Okay, well can you at least make sure that all the sales-centric content and training information are properly tagged with the right keywords, detailed descriptions, product names, product family, content owners, even expiration dates, etcetera so salespeople can just find them when they need them. Do you see where I’m coming from? So the majority of your organization, in terms of what you need to do, is to address the salespeople’s most common challenges head-on. The maturity of a sales enablement function will come naturally when you start addressing salespeople’s challenges one by one. That’s how I see that you can evolve the maturity of a sales enablement function. OF: Yeah, absolutely. especially alongside challenges, I think that’s fantastic. Well, Pam, thanks so much for joining the podcast today. I love this conversation and loved hearing more about your book. Thank you again. PD: Thank you so much for having me, really appreciate it. Take care! OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

Olivia Fuller: Hi and welcome to Book Club, a Sales Enablement PRO podcast. I'm Olivia Fuller. Sales enablement is a constantly evolving space and we're here to help professionals stay up to date on the latest trends and best practices so they can be more effective in their jobs. While enablement has recently emerged as a formal business function over the last several years, the idea of enabling sellers to succeed has existed in businesses for a long time. As the function of enablement has become more solidified in recent years, selling as a profession has also undergone a lot of change. Inevitably this means that enablement will continue to evolve alongside those changes. Pam Didner, the author of Effective Sales Enablement is here to talk to us a little bit about some of those core concepts from her book about where enablement has historically been and how organizations can lean on enablement to overcome some of those challenges that they may face in the future. So with that, Pam, I’d love to hear a little bit about yourself and tell us a little bit more about your book. Pam Didner: Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. It’s wonderful to be part of your podcast. My name is Pam Didner and I am a B2B marketer, writer, and podcaster. I love anything and everything related to B2B marketing. I worked in the corporate setting for almost 20 years doing many things actually from finance, accounting, product management, even operations, and content marketing all the way down to global marketing where I created a strategy for a lot of geographies for the content marketing teams. I worked on the global strategy so they can create their go-to-market plan. I wrote a book about effective sales enablement and it’s really about what a B2B marketer should do to better support their sales team. OF: Fantastic. Well, Pam, thanks so much for being here. What I really loved about your book is you spent some time walking through the history of sales enablement and you talk in the book about how acts of enabling sellers, whether or not that’s been called sales enablement, have actually existed for a long before the term was actually coined and the formal discipline was formed. I’d love to hear your perspective on what some of those ways were that enablement initiatives have historically existed in organizations. PD: Yeah, I’d love to share that. I wrote a whole chapter about that. For a long time selling goods and services was not complicated because our lives were not complicated. You know, we buy food, we farm and we go to sleep. It’s not complicated, but then things changed dramatically after the Industrial Revolution, especially the invention of the steam engine. That literally changed everything because now we can use steam engines to power almost everything. People started building complicated machines using steam engines to automate things and make our lives a whole lot more efficient. For example, we started using steam engines to build trains, right? Think about it. Steam engines are pretty complicated machines then trains are also pretty complicated, so we are building a complicated device on top of a complicated device. Now all of a sudden you have to explain those complicated devices in a way that the buyers can understand. For the longest time, we used horses to transport us. Then the train was invented, but nobody has ever seen a train before. You have to explain what the train will do. Then all of a sudden the people who are selling the train need to be educated in terms of what the train will do and then be able to explain how the train will function. That by itself or in essence, it’s a sales enablement, even though the term was not created or coined back in the 1900s. So really, if you think about it, for the longest time ever since the early 1900s, we were building more and more complicated devices on top of complicated devices. Now, the salespeople’s job is actually trying to sell those complicated devices. They need to be educated. They need to be trained. They need to know their products well. Things changed dramatically in the 1980s. The reason is we invented the computer. Computers actually existed way before that, but the personal computer started to become very popular. Way back then it was like ‘what is a computer, what can a computer do?' The computer was at that time really doing a very complex calculation on behalf of humans. We never ever imagine that the computer can do whatever they are doing now almost like 30 years later. We cannot imagine that, so way back then when people invented computers, especially IBM, they were like okay what does a computer do? I mean it’s literally the machine that is being enclosed inside and then people walk around and see what these things do? The IBM sales professional needed to actually understand what the computer will do and then educate the buyers about its benefit and its features of it. They coined the term sales enablement according to Wikipedia, and I’m not surprised they actually coined that term. It’s really about training sales so they can understand the complicated products they are selling and how to explain that in a way the buyers can understand. So initially sales enablement was really about sales training and sales onboarding. I think the term has been expanded. It’s almost like everything that sales are doing and that needs to be supported can be cold sales enablement. OF: I think that’s very true and just how much enablement has expanded in its definition and organizations over the last few years. I love what you also talked about around the innovation and the business landscape and even all the way back to the industrial revolution, but really how these sales trends have been impacting selling as a profession over even just the last few decades. I’d love to hear a little bit more about that. What are some of the ways that sales organizations have evolved in recent years? PD: Great question. Remember I mentioned earlier that salespeople need to be trained when they sell complicated products? In a way, the evolution of sales has a lot to do with technological evolutions and also technological advancement. The complexity of a product actually does have a huge impact in terms of the evolution of sales and also how people conduct the selling process and engagement, but there’s another important element which is the buyer’s purchasing behavior. How buyers purchase any products, especially B2B products, will impact how salespeople sell. For example, the internet, digital media, and even the pandemic have impacted how buyers purchase or behave, therefore massively impacting how salespeople or sales organizations evolve. For example, for the longest time, salespeople have visited their clients several times to close the deals and they had to be present. With the virtual meetings and the pandemic in the past couple of years, sales engagement with clients has evolved even sales hiring. Do we need to hire people on the ground that should be near our client base? I don’t know, maybe that has changed. From my perspective, as I said, the complexity of a product can impact the evolution of sales and the other one is the buyer’s behavior. Another important factor I mentioned in my book is millennials they are joining the sales force and are digital natives. The way they need to be supported, trained, and communicate with will be very, very different from the previous generation of a sales force. If you are supporting both generations, how should you support them? The evolution of a sales engagement will be dramatically different depending on the age of the sales team as well. OF: Yeah, I think that’s such an important point around the generations in the workforce and how their expectations and how they are wired to interact with customers is different. I think that’s so important to take that into consideration. PD: I totally agree. For example, a lot of millennials prefer texting, so the way they communicate with the buyers is actually through texting, but the older generation prefers email and they prefer talking to them, picking up the phone, and having a conversation. Because the communication mechanism is so different, the way that you need to train those people needs to be different as well. OF: I couldn’t agree more on that point. Looking ahead to the next few years, what are some of your predictions for how selling will continue to evolve? PD: You know, I hate making predictions. Selling, especially technology selling, is going to get even more complicated and that just affects. The biggest challenge from my perspective, moving forward is to find a way to explain complex ideas or the product in simple terms that your buyers will understand. That sounds like this age-old challenge, but I’m telling you many companies have not solved that. The messaging, such as what to say and how to say about your product, will continue to challenge the sales product and marketing team. I don’t think that will ever stop. The other one is that the buyer’s attention span is getting shorter and shorter. I am the guilty one as well. So we need to think about the types of content and outreach communication to get their heads turning. So what can we do so that it’s not creepy? The buyer knows that you are virtually stalking them, but how can you communicate and reach out to them? It’s not like you know that I’m following you every step. That, in terms of how to understand them and communicate with them yet not be creepy, will be also a knowledge challenge that from my perspective that those people will face in the next couple of years. Another thing is technology will continue to play a critical role in helping sales and unraveling buyers' intent. There are a lot of tools out there to actually help you understand if the buyer is ready to buy, what is their intention, and whether are they apprehensive to buy. Sales professionals, along with the marketing team will continue to evaluate different kinds of tools they need and incorporate that into their sales stages. The key thing is the more tools that you incorporate into the sales stages, the more tools that salespeople need to learn and they hate that. So how you get your sales team motivated to learn more about the new tools can also be challenging. Did I depress everybody now? OF: No, those are very, very great points and they’re very real. I mean those are challenges that I absolutely think are prevalent today in a lot of organizations. I think it will continue to persist, especially as there’s so much change happening in the business landscape and economic uncertainty right now. I think every point that you just mentioned is absolutely spot on. With that in mind, one of the things that you do mention in the book is that one of the core purposes of enablement, from your perspective, is really to increase sales velocity. With all of this change that organizations and that sellers are experiencing right now, how can enablement really help organizations not only maintain but improve sales velocity? PD: That’s a great question. The key thing is you need to set up sales enablement success metrics. Let's assume increasing sales velocity is very important for the sales team. Then you need to define what sales velocity is and you need to incorporate that as a part of your success metrics. So that’s number one. Now, let's assume that the sales velocity is an increased conversion rate, and let's assume that’s your definition of yours. Now, you need to think through what the sales enablement team is doing as a part of your job to actually increase that conversion rate. Are you training your sales team faster when a new product is launched, literally two weeks before the product is launched, you have training ready and everybody is educated and onboarded. That can increase sales conversion through training and arming them with the data they need. Maybe the other one is to give them enough content at different sales stages so they know what kind of content they should use at the different sales stages. That’s also another way to showcase that you are increasing sales conversion. You need to determine what you are doing as part of your success metrics and you need to define what sales velocity means to you and also to the sales team and then make a decision to quantify. A lot of things can be very abstract. It’s very hard to directly say that is the sales enablement contribution, but you can basically make a percentage and make sure that the salespeople agree with that or you can determine your deliverables in a way that the sales team agrees with that and use that to quantify your contribution to increase the sales velocity. OF: Absolutely. I think defining what that means for your organization as the first step is a fantastic point. That was great advice. In thinking ahead as well, I know you said you don’t like to make predictions, but alongside some of those predictions that you did lay out with some of the challenges that sales organizations will continue to experience over the next couple of years, I’d love to hear your take on where you think enablement is going as a function. How do you think enablement will continue to mature and evolve alongside some of those larger-scale changes in the business landscape over the next few years? PD: Let me answer that a little bit differently as well. I think the maturity of an organization in terms of setting up the sales enablement function is going to be different from company to company. I just want to make that very clear and there’s no best practice that will apply to all companies. I think it’s very, very important that each company looks inward to evaluate its own processes and tools. There are things that salespeople always complain about, especially when they are not getting the support they need. For example, the number one reason that salespeople complain the most that I’m aware of is, ‘I don’t know where the content is, I cannot find the content when I need it'. Okay, well can you at least make sure that all the sales-centric content and training information are properly tagged with the right keywords, detailed descriptions, product names, product family, content owners, even expiration dates, etcetera so salespeople can just find them when they need them. Do you see where I’m coming from? So the majority of your organization, in terms of what you need to do, is to address the salespeople’s most common challenges head-on. The maturity of a sales enablement function will come naturally when you start addressing salespeople’s challenges one by one. That’s how I see that you can evolve the maturity of a sales enablement function. OF: Yeah, absolutely. especially alongside challenges, I think that’s fantastic. Well, Pam, thanks so much for joining the podcast today. I love this conversation and loved hearing more about your book. Thank you again. PD: Thank you so much for having me, really appreciate it. Take care! OF: To our audience, thanks for listening. For more insights, tips, and expertise from sales enablement leaders visit salesenablement.pro and if there's something you'd like to share or a topic that you'd like to learn more about, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.

Pam Didner is a marketing consultant, writer, speaker, podcaster, and author of 3 books: Global Content Marketing, Effective Sales Enablement, and the Modern AI Marketer.  She has given future trends, content marketing and sales enablement presentations and workshops in the US, Europe, South America and Asia. Her forte is to create successful global marketing plans that meet local marketing and sales team's needs. She is strategic in nature and tactical in execution. She also specializes in sales, marketing and internal/external communications consulting, keynote presentations, corporate training and planning sessions. Her clients include Intel, 3M, Sunstar, Cisco, TE Connectivity, Southwest Airlines to name just a few. She shares marketing thoughts at pamdidner.com. Learn More About Pam - Click Here

Carlos Hidalgo, Chief Revenue Officer at Demand Spring, and special guest Pam Didner, the Founder of Relentless Pursuit, join today's discussion to recap some important marketing trends that happened in 2022 and offer their insights on what marketers should be thinking about for the upcoming year ahead. They discuss everything from AI integration, to marketing and sales alignment, and so much more!   Key Takeaways: [2:30] Pam shares how she thought the year went, from a B2B marketer's perspective. [4:50] Carlos also shares his thoughts on how the year went. [9:20] What should marketers look forward to or be aware of in 2023? [14:40] Should you outsource the way you collect and manage data? [17:15] The way marketers are trying to connect different tools and dashboards together has been a huge roadblock. [21:20] There is a lack of a “puzzle master” that looks at all the pieces of technology and orients them to the marketing and business strategy. [22:45] With so many technology options out there, Pam and other marketers have a hard time honing down on what kind of questions they should ask to get the right answers they need. [28:00] Let's talk about AI. Can marketers rely on it? [32:45] Large firms are trying to figure out how to digitally transform because they realize their investors and customers are already ahead of the curve. [37:50] How do Pam and Carlos think about marketing and sales alignment? [41:40] The customer experience has to come from the top down to impact powerful change. [45:10] HR needs to be a stronger player going forward to help guide the CMO with a good change management strategy going forward. [46:50] Have a solid plan for what you want to do in the next 12 months.   Mentioned in This Episode: Demandspring.com Pamdidner.com Carlos on LinkedIn Pam on LinkedIn  

A big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina and welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More! I'm Pam Didner. What can I say about 2022? I can sum it up in one word: Great! The great pandemic, the great resignation, the great relocation, the great retirement, and the great stock market crash. Somehow, all of that led to the great reshuffling of our lives. It was exhaustingly great. I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast! I need to do an episode of my experience living in North Carolina one of these days. If you are a listener and a native in North Carolina, reach out and talk to me about North Carolina. I'd love to learn about and understand this state a whole lot more. One of my 2023 new resolutions is to drive around in North Carolina, Charlotte, the Outer Banks, Asheville, Blue Ridge Mountains and more. I can't wait!! I think we all agree that we are somehow go back to a sense of normality in 2nd half of the year. I was on the road for 8 weeks from September to December, speaking at conference, visiting clients and seeing friends and colleagues at different cities. Love to see people in Zoom, but hugging people in-person, it's just lovely! If you're not a hugger I completely understand.   But it's also been wonderful to continue having thoughtful and inspiring conversations here on the podcast. For this final episode of 2022, I'm going to highlight some episodes I think are especially helpful for my B2B peeps and listeners.  So let's get started!   As I mentioned earlier, I love to travel.  So I thought today I'd take you on a trip with me.  It's a sales journey of sorts; but this one includes some special stops along the way.  At each stop an expert guest of mine from the past year will share tips and tricks to help you improve your sales and marketing chops and to reach more ideal customers.   This journey begins with a conversation I had with Carla Johnson back in February. Carla is a marketing and innovation strategist, keynote and author. For her book REThink: Innovation, Carla interviewed her clients to unlock how innovation happens and can continue happening. What she found boiled down to the five steps of what she calls the “Perpetual Innovation Process.” The steps are observe, distill, relate, generate and pitch. What I loved about our conversation is that Carla has found a way to demystify innovation.   It's not solely about geniuses coming up with ideas no one has ever heard of before. Everyone, I mean everyone, is capable of innovating, says Carla, and they can learn from other industries. Like how McDonald's studied Formula 1 pit crews to help their drive-thru teams work better and faster. Carla shared another example from the B2B world:   Carla Johnson: - I have a great friend named Tim Washer and Tim is a comedian. And he's worked with some of the best of the best Conan O'Brien. He was a writer for Amy Poehler on Saturday Night Live Weekend Update, you know, that level of comedian. So he worked, he was a Creative Director at Cisco. And he had a new product launch to do. And you know, like a technology company, you don't think of them as doing amazingly creative and innovative product launches. It's usually an executive or an engineer talking about, you know, the features and all of the new things that customers can do because of this product. But Tim said, “let's do something really different and innovative.” Then he happened to be in a comedy club in New York City one night and the comedian Ray Romano was on stage and Tim kind of sat back in his chair and he really observed the whole audience, not just Ray as a comedian and a performer. But he said, as he watched it, he observed how Ray moved on the stage and he observed the body responses and how people began to lean in as Ray went through his routine and Ray talked about things like family and in-laws and kids and, and all of these things that people could really relate to in a short amount of time, but all through humor. And as Ray got people to laugh, in the audience everybody's emotional wall started to go down. And so as Tim looked at that, all of these things that he observed, he distilled that into patterns--patterns of being able to build relationships very quickly with people that most likely Ray didn't know, and then talking about things that were very familiar. Doing it with humor. And it was this laughter that got people to lower their emotional walls and be willing to hear things that they normally wouldn't hear. So it was those patterns that he related into his work. Now the next step is generate and generating ideas. So now when Tim went to generate an idea for this product launch, he said, “how can we use humor to talk about something that everybody knows, but in a way that gets them to laugh and lower their emotional walls?” And that's how he used humor to do a video for the product launch, which happened to come out right around Valentine's Day. And so instead of having an engineer talk about how fantastic the ASR 9000 router is, he made it into a Valentine's Day video that talked about the ASR 9000 router being the perfect Valentine's Day gift. And you think about putting this router right up there with diamonds and jewelry and flowers…. Pam Didner: It certainly stands out (laughs)! Carla Johnson: Exactly, but because he was able to tell the story of what he observed, the patterns he noticed, how that related into the work, how that generated his idea, that was his pitch. The pitch is actually to go back and walk through each of these steps and you have a natural story structure to it.   That's Carla Johnson. Love her! To learn more about innovation and how teams can move on if they get stuck in the process check out the full episode. I'll put a link in the show notes.   So, building off my conversation with Carla, let's say your company has come up with a fantastic product, service or upgrade. Your marketing time has come up with great messaging, collateral, and a plan. Now, it's time to get the word out and sell it to your customers.   In today's marketing world, a big part of advertising is digital ads. Of course there are a lots of options: FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, you name it. Back in June, I reached out to AJ Wilcox, to talk about his specialty: LinkedIn ads. He told me he likes LinkedIn because you can target your pay ads to people with specific job titles, at specific companies, in specific regions. That means you can target your ideal customer.   But when AJ and I spoke we agreed that's only one part of the equation. Pay ads (on ANY platform) campaigns also need to be set up to help you learn more about customers. So that means avoiding one-and-done ad campaigns.   AJ Wilcox: It's really important on any channel to make sure that you generate enough data, that you can tell whether or not something's working. And if you go in and just spend the very minimum that you can on LinkedIn, which is $10 a day...    Pam Didner: Don't bother.    AJ Wilcox: If the $300 in a month, that'll give you a handful of clicks; you will not be any closer to finding out if it's a channel that works. So what I recommend is if you're going to approach LinkedIn Ads, don't do it with less than about a $5,000 per month budget. And so many small businesses can still afford that, but I'm assuming some listeners will be like, "Man, I don't have that." So if that's your case, as well, what I would recommend is just make sure that you are set to spend $5,000 before you shut it off. So if your budget is only $1,500 a month, great, just make sure you are running it for at least three months before you make the decision to cut it or increase.    Pam Didner: The other question I want to ask, which is kind of on top of tha,t as well. If you do have $5,000, how long should you run? Of course, you're going to say as long as possible, but minimal level?   AJ Wilcox: Yeah, for me, advertising is very much a linear process. You're going to spend money; you're going to get impressions. And then those impressions are going to turn into clicks. And then a certain percentage of those clicks will turn into conversions. And then a certain number of those conversions can become sales qualified or marketing qualified leads. A certain percentage of... I mean, I'm preaching to the choir here, but for me it depends on what level of surety, the level of confidence that you want.    Pam Didner: Got it.   AJ Wilcox: If you just want to find out, what is my cost per lead from this channel going to be? Yeah, you could spend for two, three months and go, "Oh, looks like my cost per lead is— .”   Pam Didner: Okay. I got some baseline. Yeah.    AJ Wilcox: Yeah, exactly. But if your goal is to find out what is my ROI from LinkedIn Ads? Yeah, you're going to have to look at how long is my sales cycle and how long does it take us to nurture these leads to close? And maybe you're going to be in this for two, three, four years before you have statistical significance around that data. So it really is up to you, but I would say if you are running against Facebook ads, hands down, Facebook ads is always going to be a lower cost per lead because the cost per click was cheaper. But when you follow that into your CRM, you look further down the sales cycle, you're going to find that, wow, because LinkedIn's targeting was so good at getting the right people, even though we're paying more for it, by the time you're looking at your cost per sales qualified lead, or your cost per proposal sent, or your cost per closed deal, all of a sudden LinkedIn looks really good compared to Facebook. But so many people were scared off by it because of the initial high costs that they never gave it a real chance.   I was speaking with AJ Wilcox who specializes in running LinkedIn pay ads.   He also shared some dos and don'ts about setting up campaigns in LinkedIn, so be sure and check out the full episode.   As we continue on this year-end episode of B2B Marketing & More, let's continue on our journey to: sales! You know I'm all about effective Sales Enablement and helping sales and marketing teams work together. Having worked along side-by-side with the sales teams for many years, I know there are some particular challenges they face—especially if they're tasked to bring in more contracts.     So back in March I checked in with Ryan Staley, a long-time sales professional and the CEO and founder of Whale Boss to talk about what it takes to land a deal. In the conversation I asked him about common mistakes sales teams make when they approach a potential customer.   Ryan Staley: One of the things that a lot of companies where people focus on are sales reps or sales leaders is like, “Hey, the ROI for the company is this. They're going to save millions of dollars are going to do this.” But one of the things that they forget is, okay, how is that individual person evaluated? Like what kind of KPIs are they evaluated with? You know, at the end of the year, when they sit down with their boss and you're just finished, are they going to get a bonus or are they going to get demoted? And did they hit on what they were supposed to? So that's the tangible business side of it. But then also it's like, what does that solution going to do emotionally for that person that you're selling to? Because logic is how people make decisions. Emotion is what creates action. And so those two kinds of triggers are key things to look at when you're trying to work and sell. So I would say that's number one. Number two is just ask really, really good questions. Okay? That's one of the advantages that sales has over marketing. We can physically talk to the people, versus like looking and getting feedback from communities and social. You can actually talk to the people and ask them specific, tangible questions on the outcomes they want, what's bothering them, all those details. So I would say just being a ninja at asking really, really good questions that are thought provoking and that make people question thoughts that they've had previously. Pam Didner: So what if you're trying for a corporate client and you can't get in there for the one-on-one to ask questions? and have to go in cold? Ryan Staley: So there was a deal that my team was working and the reps were full cycle. And so they had a prospect. Um, they didn't have like an SDR team or we didn't have any marketing support. So they had to find a way to get into these really, really big Fortune 1000, Fortune 500 companies. One of the companies that are trying to get into was Walgreens and Walgreens is like Fortune 10. So they're even bigger than big. Right? Well, what happened was Walgreens has recently merged with Boots--this was maybe four years back. They just merged with Boots and their CEO and chairman identified in their press release that one of the number one priorities and outcomes from the merger is gain quote-unquote “synergies”; where they're going to get $500 million in synergies from merging the companies. And what they were saying basically is they're taking $500 million out of the business in costs. So one of the levers we hit on to get in there was to link to that initiative that the CEO was talking about— Pam Didner: Because it's top down, it's coming from the management. It's top down. Ryan Staley: Exactly, exactly. And so, so that's a good example of how to hit on that. You could look at 10K's. You could look at other financials if you want on that; the letter to the CEO in the annual report is great. Obviously that doesn't scale for small-to-medium sized companies but for big, big deals that's what I would recommend. Ryan Staley is founder and CEO of Whale Boss. When we spoke he also shared ways to develop rapport quickly with a potential client, so check out the full episode.   Connecting to potential clients through a sales team is one way to reach new customers or re-establish past relationships; but another approach I like is marketing through thought-leadership. It may not be as direct and immediate as pay ads, but it's a long play which is sensible with B2B companies with a long purchase cycle. Use content to influence your customer's point of view about specific products or technologies.   When I thought about addressing this topic in the podcast, I knew I had to talk with Erika Heald. She's a founder and the lead consultant at Erica Heald Marketing Consulting, where she helps SaaS startups, specialty food companies, and many others. She told me, too often, thought leadership can feel like a “one-way blast of information coming from a brand.”       Erika Heald: For me thought leadership is when you're putting those unique perspectives from leaders within your company out there in the public on a regular basis through various types of content. So it can be everything from blog posts, to eBooks to public speaking engagements, podcasts, all of these different avenues. But the key is people who are subject matter experts and having a point of view. And this is for me where I see the biggest kind of issues come up because frequently--and not to disparage PR agencies--but frequently you will see thought leadership as a couple of slides in a PR presentation, as you know, “oh, hey, so for this month, here's the thought leadership” and it's a couple of catchy headlines with your CEO's picture next to it. And it's like, “well, that's all great, but they're not necessarily thought leadership.” A lot of times they're tied into the PR campaign or what have you, but they're not really focused on that human being and their experiences and sharing them with people in a meaningful way. And from my perspective, you have to have that involvement with that thought leader and have that unique perspective and point of view that they're willing to share. If they're gonna just tell you everything that you already read in HBR that month, that is not going to work because people want something authentic and real. Pam Didner: If they know specific topic or field, very, very well, they can help other people to learn or provide some insights that say other companies or competitors cannot provide. That's also a sense of a thought leadership. Is that correct? Erika Heald: 100%. You know, thought leadership is not limited to your C-suite. If you're only putting your CEO out there or the other folks who sit on that same floor--you know, if you have a physical headquarters anymore. Realistically, some of your best thought leaders are going to be those folks with deep subject matter expertise that know a lot about your customers or who used to have jobs that are the same jobs that your ideal customers have. They're going to be those people who deeply feel the pain and the challenges that your customers have everyday. Those folks are gonna be fantastic thought leaders and have so much to offer out there. So I definitely encourage folks to look a little bit more widely at who could be part of their thought leadership programs.   That was Erika Heald. If you struggle to identify thought leaders, Erika has some good tips in this episode. We also talked about how to juggle when multiple teams play a role in communicating thought leadership. That's a tricky one, so check out the full episode.   And again, links for all the episodes I featured today are in the show notes.   Thanks for taking this journey with me today. These experts have some fantastic tips and tricks to help you and your company innovate, advertise, sell and educate. I'm always here if you have questions about B2B sales and marketing, so don't hesitate to reach out. Happy Holidays and see you on the other side in 2023. Take care. Bye!

Pam Didner, a B2B marketing consultant, producer, and writer, talks with Jeremy about scaling content across different regions.Highlights:What scaling content across regions actually meansWhen to simply translate content and when to completely rework itStrategies for communicating and collaborating with content teams in other regionsVisit Pam's WebsiteConnect with Pam on LinkedInListen to Pam's PodcastMemorable Quotes:" I want to talk about it from two different layers, if you will. One is kind of, how to work with your counterpart at geographies. The other one is really, you know, what are the types of content that you need to be aware to scale.""We modify the messaging and once you modify the messaging, everything's trickling down.""I don't believe that the ownership of content should be 100% corporate or 100%, say, at the geography level because if each geo creates their own content and they don't necessarily have a central force to have it communicate, it creates a lot of duplication and also inefficiency."The B2B Content Show is produced by Connversa, a podcast production agency helping B2B brands connecting with prospects, generates TONS of content, and grow revenue. Learn more at connversa.com

Artificial Intelligence has been a buzzword in martech. Many martech vendors position their products as AI-based platforms. What does that mean to marketers? What do marketers need to know about AI to either evaluate vendors' platforms or modify their existing sales and marketing processes? Pam Didner, Author of Global Content Marketing and Effective Sales Enablement, will share examples and case studies so that you can easily evaluate AI or build AI-centric martech stacks that fit your processes and flows.Check out upcoming DigiMarCon Digital Marketing, Media, and Advertising Conferences & Exhibitions Worldwide at https://digimarcon.com/events/

Welcome to another episode, B2B Marketing and More with Pam Didner from Raleigh, North Carolina. So big, big hello to everyone. And this time we really want to talk about something very special: podcasting. Well, I'm doing podcasting right now, but I really want to talk to an expert that has been in this field for a long period of time doing podcasting, and then come talk to us in terms of what dos and don'ts and also, how can you showcase value add if you want to use podcasts as a content marketing channel. So today we have Jeremy Shere. He's a founder and the CEO of Conversa, which is the B2B podcasting agency on top of it. He's also the host of the B2B content show. Yay. Thank you for coming to my show.   Jeremy Shere: Well, Pam, thank you so much for having me. It's uh, so awesome to be here.   Pam Didner: I know you are the expert. So I have many, many questions I would like to ask you. Okay. So the thing about podcasting is, has become so popular nowadays, like almost every celebrity has their own podcast show. What is the value add for B2B companies and what should the B2B marketer think about podcasting as a channel.   Jeremy Shere: First of course you're exactly right. Podcasting just generally has really blown up over the last 6, 7, 8 years, you know? And with tens of millions of people just in the United States alone--and around the world, many more than that--regular podcast listeners, you know, it's just become a part of a daily part of people's lives. And for the general person, you know, why are people listening to podcasts for entertainment to learn things. But you asked a good question, like, “oh, okay. That's fine. But what does any of this have to do with B2B marketing?” And there are a lot of ways to answer that question, but, um, podcasting alongside your other marketing channels, it can add some really dynamic and unique elements that you're not necessarily already getting from say a blog, or a webinar series or the videos that you're doing; you can break that down in a couple different ways. Really the central value of podcasting is that, by its nature, it involves having real unscripted one-on-one conversations with people that you want to be talking to; just like we're doing right now, right? And so if you're a B2B market, And you start a podcast. It's really all about who do you want to talk to on the podcast? When you start a podcast and you start in inviting guests on, that means you're having 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, maybe an hour of time with them to have a real conversation with them that's not a sales call. It's not a marketing event; it's just a real human interaction. And if you're strategic about who you invite on, then that's really valuable time with that person. So let's say you, you, from among your audience, you, you target your best prospects.   Pam Didner: Invite them on. Yeah. Or your customers have them talk about their best practices. Yep.   Jeremy Shere: Yeah. Your, your existing customers, your prospects, um, thought leaders in your industry. And so you bring them onto your show and you're doing a few things there. First of all, you're getting kind of exclusive time with them to have like a really in depth conversation about something that they're passionate about. It's really a great way to develop a relationship with the people that you're talking to. You also learn a lot about them and what they really care about and how they think and what really matters to them, both as people and in business. So that gives you really valuable insight into going forward, you know, how to communicate with them. And you're also, you're, you're creating content with them. So, just by the nature of having them on your show and then producing the episode, you're already working with them and collaborating with them and kind of demonstrating what you can do and what it's like to interact with you. And as long as you follow through and you do what you say you're gonna do, and you, you make it a great experience and you do a really good interview and it's fun and it's invigorating and then you produce the show at the highest level and you put it out there and you promote it--and so you're promoting them and their thinking and their thoughts and their expertise--you've added a lot of value. And you've gotten a lot of value. So it's this great exchange of value without doing any explicit selling or marketing. It's just, you're really building a strong relationship.   Pam Didner: I love that. In fact, one of my guests, Bernie Borges. He was using the term account based podcasting for his company's podcast. They always have a list of accounts and the prospects they, they would like to reach out and, uh, possibly build a relationship with. And they use the podcast as a channel to reach out to a prospect and invite them to be on the show. And it turned out to be a great way for them to actually build a relationship. So it's taking that account based marketing concept down to the podcast channel.   Jeremy Shere: Yeah, no, that, that's a great example.   Pam Didner: So Jeremy, I know that, uh, you manage podcast productions for many B2B companies and clients. So how do they measure success? I mean, is it just number of downloads and that is it? I know subscribers, anything else specific?   Jeremy Shere: It depends on what your goals are for the podcast and sort of what your expectations are.   Pam Didner: Well, give us some examples.   Jeremy Shere: Well, let's start with what you already said. The standard way to measure the success of a podcast is by downloads, right? So what we're really talking about is for a given episode, how many people are engaging with it? how many people are listening, right? And you get that data and you, and if you're producing a podcast, then you have access to that data. And that's all about your, uh, your audience, right? How, how is your audience growing? How large of an audience are you, are you managing to build? I think that that metric is very different if you're a, B2B marketer and you're doing podcasting. Then if you are doing podcasting to just sort of reach, you know, as many listeners as possible anywhere, if your show is mainly for entertainment. And it's important to keep in mind that you're doing a very niche podcast. If you're doing a B2B podcast right, you are aiming it at a very particular audience. One of our clients is a, um, a SaaS company in the, uh, supply chain space. And so their podcast is really aimed at like supply chain professionals.   Pam Didner: Yep. Procurement managers, supply chain professionals.   Jeremy Shere: Yes. And I don't know how many of those people there are out there in the world. Right. But it's very particular group of people like very niche audience. And so you're trying to capture the biggest percentage of that audience, you can, but in raw numbers, it's not gonna be anything like the most popular podcast in the world that get like millions of listeners. Right?   Pam Didner: So you set up expectations, obviously, with your clients; but still, how do they major their success?   Jeremy Shere: It really helps to have a sense of your audience and of the potential audience out there. So you might be getting 150 like regular listeners per episode, let's say. And in raw numbers that might not seem like a lot, but. It all depends in the context. That means every single time you put in, put out an episode getting 150 people, the exact people who are your audience, right? that you're providing services for, who are tuning in to hear what you have to say and what your guests have to say. Right? So there's a different way of thinking about it.  So, but in any case, that's just one way of measuring. Another way of measuring the value is the content that you're generating from the podcast. I was on a call with a client just the other day. And I asked her, you know, “how, how is the podcast going? What can we improve?” And I said, “well, why don't we look at the, you know, the numbers, the download numbers.” And she said, “you know what? We can do that, but I'll be honest with you. I'm not really, I don't really look at those numbers so much. Like I have a general sense of them, but that's not really how we value the podcast for us. It's all about the content that it generates.” So for every episode, they get the audio episode. They also, we record some video for them. So they also got the video. I take that video and repurpose it as promotional content, and then they turn their turning every episode into at least one blog post and a bunch of social media content. So for this particular client, the main value lies in the fact that it's a content generation engine and it helps them produce content much more efficiently than they were doing before.   Pam Didner: Can you also share with us, given that you work with mainly B2B companies and a lot of B2B marketers will be curious to find out how much it cost to say, uh, produce an episode. And, uh, if they have to set up a budget, you know, what is the set of budget will look like? And also how much it costs to actually produce an episode?   Jeremy Shere: Yeah, absolutely. There's a pretty wide range and it, of course, totally depends on what kind of podcast you're doing kind of the level of, you know, production that you're getting into. So for us, I mean, I can just tell you how our pricing range is. At the simplest end, where we're just producing a pretty basic audio podcast, interview style and we're focusing primarily on the post-production, meaning the, the client records and then they send us the files and we edit them and produce them and make them sound awesome and package it all together. Put in the music, put in the intro and outro, upload it to the hosting platform. That's gonna be somewhere in the range of probably $700, $800 per episode, per episode.  And you know, typically people will buy like a package of episodes that might have some, discount built in. If you're getting a little more complicated and you're also looking for preproduction services--that might include helping you find guests, book guests, uh, right. questions, sort of do all, everything that needs to happen to get you prepared to actually record the interview. And you, you might want like an engineer, just like you have Scott behind the scenes. If you, if you need, you know, uh, an engineer just to make sure that everything sounds good, looks good to troubleshoot if any problems comes up. So then that's a higher level of service and yeah. Then you're talking, uh, anywhere from about, um, you know, $1,200, $1,500 an episode. And then another tier is reproducing each episode to create other kinds of content. So producing a full-length video episode, promo videos of blog posts, all that stuff. Then you're looking at anywhere from about maybe $1,800 to over $2,000 an episode, somewhere in that range. And it really, you know, that's, that's kind of where we are at the moment. And if, if people go online, they'll probably find some that are a bit less, some that are, that might be. More depending. And, you know, there might be companies offering services that we're not doing right now. So people who are watching or are listening to this might be thinking like, “well, okay, what if we just found like a freelancer on Fivrr who could just, you know, do some really basic editing and, and stuff like that. And, you know, I'll say you can definitely do that. You can find a much cheaper way to do all this.   Pam Didner: Can I actually interrupt and provide feedback on that? Yeah, sure. Jeremy, I do agree with you that all the B2B marketers can do that. And that if budget is a huge concern, they, they have no choice but to do that; however, I have done that because I, I produce podcasts myself and I also produce YouTube video myself in the past. So I started to go to Fivrr. I started go to UpWork to find, uh, the production systems and also the editor to do that. And I'm not saying that you cannot find the right way. I agree with Jeremy on that because I have done it in the past. I end up not doing that. If you are B2B companies and you are happy to be marketers and you are representing your brand, I hate saying this. I strongly suggest not to do that. Unless budget is a huge, huge issue. And, uh, I would hire someone that have a, a high level experience of doing it. It's a quality over quantity from my perspective. So, but that's just my very strong opinion. The reason I'm passionate about that, Jeremy, sorry to interrupt you again, is I have done that. So, and it was not it was always not what I was looking for. That's I hate saying it, but.   Jeremy Shere: Yeah. Well look, you know, obviously I'm a little biased, but I think. The reason and, you know, tell me if this was your, your experience, but what you run into when you, you know, might hire somebody for like 20 bucks an hour to edit your podcast is you usually get what you pay for in pay for in terms of the quality.   Pam Didner: Yeah. I, 100% agree with that. Yeah.   Jeremy Shere: And there are different schools of thought on this. You know, there, there is one school of thought that just says, you know, just record some stuff and put it up there. The audio quality is really not the most important thing. It's most, it's more important that you just record and get stuff out there at volume. And personally, I disagree with that just because maybe at one time that might have been true; but I think these days there are so many more podcasts out there that if, if you're serious about it and that you actually, you want to grow an audience and you want to attract people and you want to get the best guests, you're kind of competing against the best podcast out there. And people have come to expect a certain level of quality.   Pam Didner: I do agree with that, too.   Jeremy Shere: And to keep producing episodes week after week, month after month at that same high level, it takes a team of people. Yep. It can get overwhelming if you're trying to do it yourself. Or if you just have a freelancer who may or may not be that good at it, or who might disappear at some point. You know, to really get the level of quality that I think people have come to expect and that you should want, you know, if you're gonna put stuff out there with your voice in it, or your name on it. The quality matters a lot.   Pam Didner: Hey, this is wonderful. Jeremy; it's wonderful to have you with me at my show and share a lot of your wisdom and the knowledge and insight in terms of doing the podcasting and the value provided to the B2B marketers. So thank you for coming to my show.   Jeremy Shere: Oh, you're so welcome. It was a real pleasure. I, uh, had a great time.   Pam Didner: Take care, everyone. Bye.

In this episode of the Marketing Smarts podcast, author Pam Didner sheds light on the problems marketers face pertaining to the creation and usage of a customer journey. She also gives us her thoughts on how that impacts the organization--especially s

Pam Didner: A big hello from Raleigh, North Carolina. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing & More with Pam. Christina Del Villar is our guest today. She's the author of the book called Sway. Does that sound cool or what?   Christina Del Villar: I think so.   Pam Didner: And the book is all about marketing strategy, revenue and growth. Woo-hoo. Like me, she is also a B2B marketer. So welcome, Christina.   Christina Del Villar: Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited. I know, Pam, you and I could talk B2B geeky marketing for hours.   Pam Didner: Yes, yes, yes.   Christina Del Villar: Absolutely. Absolutely.   Pam Didner: So the topic we want to talk about today, and we want to get some insights and wisdom from Christina is how a marketer can better talk to the C-suite so they can understand us so much better. And marketing tend to be very complicated, and many marketers have a hard time helping their C-suite understand marketing's impact. So, Christina, do you have any suggestions in terms of what marketers should do, go about communicating with C-suite?   Christina Del Villar: I have so much, and it's interesting because I feel like marketers in general do a bad job marketing ourselves, right?   Pam Didner: What? That is not true.   Christina Del Villar: I know. I know. It's-   Pam Didner: I'm completely offended.   Christina Del Villar: Well, maybe you're amazing at it. There's some people who are amazing at it, but-   Pam Didner: Trust me, I'm not.   Christina Del Villar: Right. But I think that's the key issue that we have as marketers is really understanding, first off, that we are speaking a very different language than the leaders of our companies are speaking, right?   Pam Didner: Yeah.   Christina Del Villar: We are in our day-to-day, our minutia, and really trying to help the company overall. But then we have a really bad way of articulating what that is to leaders. So basically, whenever I go into a board meeting, I have one slide, and it shows the revenue that we brought in for our company. And it usually is all of the revenue that the company brought in, because we had an impact in that, some way, shape, or form, along that entire customer journey. And we'll start with that number, and then we can have conversations about it. And so that's where I start. Now, obviously, not everybody's going to be going into a board meeting. And so how do you talk about it? How do you phrase it? And how do you think about it? And I think that one of the key things that we need to do is really start understanding that we own revenue. We are the ones who are bringing in the revenue, and we need to start talking about it from that standpoint. I know you talk a lot about data and AI and how all that's playing into it, which I think is amazing. And we need to take that and really talk about what it is that we're doing, the value that we're bringing, the impact that we're having from the standpoint of revenue.   Pam Didner: That's great. I love that, but I know a lot of marketers, they have a hard time quantifying the revenue contribution.   Christina Del Villar: Yeah.   Pam Didner: So what are some of the specific steps they need to do from the get-go to make sure they capture that?   Christina Del Villar: There's the component of the data itself, like you're saying, and that actual revenue number, and then there's the attribution, right? And that's where we often have trouble with that. And so I like to take it a little bit further back and think about the entire customer journey and all of the things that marketers are doing as part of that customer journey. Like, starting with a product, what do we do with product and the product team to help them build a better product, think about features and functionality, look at pricing and bundling? We are involved in all of that when it comes to product. And again, we are involved so many different ways across that customer journey: sales, obviously marketing, sales enablement, and then even customer support and success. Again, we do a lot with B2B, so we're talking long-term contracts, multiyear contracts. And how can marketing help customer support and success ensure that we can reduce churn? So these are all areas that marketers actually already have a hand in. We just need to recognize that more and then help others in the organization understand the contributions we're making across that customer journey. Therefore, when we say, or when I go to the board meeting with my one slide that shows all the revenue we brought in for that quarter, and it's all attributed some way to marketing, they have a better understanding of what I mean by that, right? So I can say, "Well, by increasing our price and talking to product and increasing our price or changing our bundles, which allowed us to contribute more value and charge a higher price, this is how marketing contributed to revenue from that standpoint." From a sales enablement standpoint, what content, how did we help sales sell better, sell faster, sell bigger deals? Right? We can show that because now people understand all of the different ways that marketing has played in these different roles. And then from a customer success standpoint, again, when you're talking about churn, are we helping customer success build how to videos, or do webinars, or have FAQs on our website, or manage the knowledge base? What are we doing as marketers? Which, again, we're already doing all of this, we're just not thinking about it in terms of how it really is contributing to the overall number that we're looking at, which again is usually that revenue number.   Pam Didner: Number one is to expand a marketer's influence, kind of like when I call it upstream.   Christina Del Villar: Yeah.   Pam Didner: Like, as a part of product development, as a product, the bundling package, if you are selling SaaS-based platforms or whatnot. And understanding in terms of how the pricing work. And if you actually have external data or some insights to actually share that information, bring that in.   Christina Del Villar: Absolutely.   Pam Didner: And so that's on the product side. And on the sales side is obviously sales enablement. What can you do to actually support them? One of the easiest way to support them is actually share the content with them, especially for the long purchasing cycle. And content is one way of doing it. And also, if you understand their sales stages and along the different sales stages, what can you do to actually support them? But I think in order to do that, you have to understand what their needs are. Would you agree, especially on the sales side?   Christina Del Villar: Absolutely.   Pam Didner: You have to understand what they do, what they need, then you tailor your support specifically for that need.   Christina Del Villar: Absolutely. And I know we do that in marketing with our own roles. We're trying to get better at it from a sales and a sales enablement standpoint. And then from the product standpoint, I think it's important to consider sharing things in context, right? So like when we're talking about why we need this feature or function or why we want to bundle it this way, or why we need to maybe listen more to our customers and manage an advisory committee, whatever that looks like, we need to put everything in context so they understand what it is that we're trying to accomplish and how we can help them. And I think that goes very much to sales as well, right? There's so many times when we're like, "Okay, here's a script," or, "Here's a case study." Right? We don't really explain how to use the content that we're developing and, like you're saying, at what stage we should be using it, right? Like, "This is a perfect piece for when you're nurturing it. If you have a really long sales cycle that's 18 months, at 12 months, this is a good piece to use." We need to help them understand how to use that content as well.   Pam Didner: Understood. Another thing I would like to get your thought is obviously for marketers, a lot of things we do, especially the money we spend on, tend to be for campaigns and outreach. It doesn't matter if it's inbound and outbound, right? And it's driving leads, build that brand awareness and drive demands. And a lot of information we receive or checking, in terms of marketing, the performance, is based on the past campaigns we have run. And you said that's lagging indicators.   Christina Del Villar: Yes.   Pam Didner: Yes. In a way, because, well, that's shared the results of the campaigns we have run in the past six months, right?   Christina Del Villar: Right.   Pam Didner: And if that's lagging indicators, and you mentioned leading versus lagging indicators, can you talk to us a little bit more about that? Well, I am being measured by how many leads I brought in. Of course, that's going to be lagging. How can I put myself a little bit more proactively upfront?   Christina Del Villar: Yeah. And I think that this is another problem that marketers have, because if you think about it, first off, again, we are in our day-to-day minutia, right?   Pam Didner: Yeah.   Christina Del Villar: So we're like, "Oh, web traffic increased today. This is great." It really doesn't mean anything to our CEO. It may not even mean anything to your CMO, right? Because they're trying to understand, "Great. You have that, and that's nice, but how is that going to help us get to our goals?" Right? And so these lagging indicators, again, we as marketers, we need to have that. We need to measure that. We definitely want to show ROI for the campaigns that we have, no question about that. But if we're talking about leading indicators, we're talking about, how is this now going to predictably have usually revenue growth or growth of some kind? What is this going to lead us to? And so this is why it's really important. So if you think about, let's just take an example, right? Let's say you have 20,000 visitors to your website this month or this quarter. So if you go into a meeting and you say, "We had 20,000 website visitors," there's no context around it and it means nothing.   Pam Didner: Nothing.   Christina Del Villar: It means nothing to leaders, right? So a good way of saying it, but it's still talking about still lagging, is to say, "We had 20,000 visitors, which is a 10% increase." So now they're like, "Oh, okay, you spent some money and now you've increased by 10%." So, that's a good way of talking about it. But a better way would be to say, "We increased our target audience website visitors by 10% because we knew what they were looking for, and we created content and delivered specifically for that audience." So, that's a better way of saying it. But best, combines the lagging and the leading, would be to say, "We increased our visits by targeting our audience and increased it by 10% due to our campaigns that we knew we were going to do. And we expect that this will lead to 20% more pipeline and 10% more revenue." Right? We don't really talk about it, but everybody in the company is trying to get to predictability, right?   Pam Didner: Yeah, true.   Christina Del Villar: That is how you can say, "This is what we're expecting." And so if you can bring more of that leading into your conversation, it helps them frame it, like, "Okay, I know what you spent your money on. I can understand the ROI, and I can understand what your expectations are going forward."   Pam Didner: Actually, we can take one step further, if you will. And I like the way you expand it, right? It's not just about 20% growth, but you talk about 20% growth in relationship to how you're going to help the sales, how it's going to help the business objective.   Christina Del Villar: Right.   Pam Didner: And also that you really narrow it down to a target audience. We can also expand it a little bit more, take all your points, if you will. Sometimes if you use IP sniffer, you can see which account or what companies that actually come to our website. If you actually do a little research and not just look into the aggregate number of 20,000 traffic, but you can also say, "Out of this 20,000 traffic, these two, three account is actually account that we want to go after." Guess what? Some of them actually come to our website. So I think call that out will also help tremendously.   Christina Del Villar: Absolutely. Or to your point, even if, again, because we're in B2B so we have multiyear contracts, usually if we see that even one of our customers is on our site, and so that might mean that not everybody in that particular company knows that they already have the solution, or maybe they're looking for something else from our solution. So it's a good opportunity for the account managers to go take a look and see what's happening, or customer success, to hopefully either reduce churn or help when it comes time to renewal as well.   Pam Didner: Yeah. All this, honestly, Christina, I agree with you, but it does require some work on the marketing side. You actually have to analyze and go behind the data to understand what the data is trying to tell you and then find the nugget.   Christina Del Villar: Yep.   Pam Didner: And that's work. I always tell B2B marketers, like, "The job is not that easy." A lot of people say, "Oh, there's a lot of blog posts out there, say, 'Oh, B2B marketing make it simple.'" I was like, "Seriously? It is hard work."   Christina Del Villar: I think I was at a Starbucks one time, and I don't know how it happened, but the barista was like, "Oh, what do you do?" And I said, "Marketing strategy." She's like, "Oh yeah, that seems really easy. Maybe I'll get into that." And I was like, "Many degrees, 30 years of pain, a lot of drinking." Right? Yeah. And I think that somebody once asked me like, "If you were to tell a marketing person or somebody who's interested in marketing, what's the one thing they really need to focus on?" And that is understanding data. If you're afraid of it, you don't want to touch it. There's so many things that marketers could do better, and one of them is literally owning the technology, right?   Pam Didner: Yeah.   Christina Del Villar: I know your book about AI is really important and critical. It's not just about AI and how it's used in marketing right now and how that will help you become a better marketer and help your company succeed both professionally and from a business standpoint, but it has to do with marketers understanding that we can use this technology to do our job better and show that influence and impact and value that we're bringing. But that means owning the technology. I can't tell you how many times I've come into a company and it's like, "The IT owns Salesforce and my marketing automation tool." And I'm like, "Well, what does IT know about the data I'm trying to extrapolate?"   Pam Didner: A lot of time they probably can own it in terms of maintaining the tool.   Christina Del Villar: Sure. Pam Didner: But in terms of what the tool will do, that part of it needs to be owned directly by the sales side. And then you also need the administrators and developers. A lot of time you still have to do some custom coding-   Christina Del Villar: Oh, absolutely.   Pam Didner: ... to make sure the tool is useful for you.   Christina Del Villar: Yeah.   Pam Didner: Yeah. I mean, that's work. Again, that's work.   Christina Del Villar: It's work. It's work. And I think that's one of the reasons why I've been so successful and my teams because I push two things. One is, "We own revenue, period, whether you like it or not," and, "You need to understand the data." I've had people on my teams who are like amazing, amazing writers and content producers, and they're not going to get the data. And that's okay. Then I'll supplement with somebody else on the team to help.   Pam Didner: But I always encourage marketing of, oh, skill set or facets, if you will, that they make an effort to understand other fields of marketing.   Christina Del Villar: Right.   Pam Didner: Say, if you create content, you know what? Well, try to understand email marketing. Well, if you understand content, well, try to look at Google Analytics and see how your content is performing. Right? You need to somehow get out of your specific job roles and responsibility, do a little bit more of that. Yeah.   Christina Del Villar: Right. And again, like you're saying, really understand it, because I think whether it's your own marketing teams or whether you're expanding and working more closely with product or sales, having that understanding and going back to the context really helps you do your job better and present, going back to the original question, present what it is that you're doing in a way that's understandable for that audience. I mean, we do it. That's what we do as marketers. We create for a specific audience. So we should do that internally as well.   Pam Didner: Well, that leads to another question, internal communication. And obviously, one of the key models of the marketing is to understand your audience, understand your audience deeply. Obviously, that also apply to internal communication with C-suites. It is actually for the marketer to frame their discussions or their takeaways around the CEO, COO, CTO, and CRO, if necessary. So can you give us an example in terms of how to frame that discussion, say, if you want to talk to, say, COO and the CTO?   Christina Del Villar: Yeah, yeah. And you should. And it's interesting because as a marketing leader, you know the suite, we talk to the CEO, the CFO, the CIO. Every CXO that's out there, we talk to them. But it's important for everyone in your marketing organization to feel comfortable speaking to those folks, or at least to having that knowledge to present. Because I've been in meetings where it's not like a board meeting, we're not presenting results necessarily, but the CEO might turn to the person who just did an event and be like, "Oh, well, what's our expected revenue?" And they're like, "What?" And then they look at me. I'm like, "No, no." You need to own your campaign and know what it is and feel comfortable talking to them. And I think, again, it goes back to really understanding, at the end of the day, what it is that this person is seeking. Again, know your audience. So the CEO, or let's not even talk about the CEO, let's talk about a VP of sales, they're concerned about pipeline and revenue and making sure that their team meets their numbers and their quota, right?   Pam Didner: Yep.   Christina Del Villar: So, that's what you need to be speaking to them about. When I was working at a company, one of the sales team complained that, "Marketing just talks about all the great stuff we do," and it's meaningless to them. And so I thought about it, and I'm like, "Yeah. No, I get what you're saying. We're like, 'We're great. This is what we did.'" And he said, he's like, "It makes sales look bad when you have..." Because I had this big chart up, like, "We brought in 50,000 leads this month." And then unbeknownst to me, the CEO's like, "Well, marketing just brought in 50,000 leads. What are you doing with them?" Right? Not even realizing that we haven't even given those to sales yet. Right? We're still nurturing them. They're still with us. They're not qualified for sales yet. So we were giving this misimpression to the CEO. It was making the sales team look bad. So we had this monthly meeting that we would have with the sales team, and we would always start off-    Pam Didner: Make sure you're on the same page. Yeah.   Christina Del Villar: Yeah, yeah, right? And we were about to go into this meeting, and it was right after this conversation I had, and I told the person my on my team who presented, I'm like, "Flip our slides." He's like, "What do you mean?" I'm like, "Start from the back. Start from how much pipeline and revenue we brought in. And then if we ever get to how many website visitors we have, it doesn't matter, right? Because this is what's going to engage sales to have an interactive conversation about what's working and what's not working." So he's like, "Okay." So he literally flipped the slides around and we started with, "This is the pipeline we brought in, and this is the revenue we brought in." And we never got to how many website visitors we had, because it didn't matter to them. They wouldn't understand.   Pam Didner: It didn't matter to them anymore. Yeah.   Christina Del Villar: Right. And so that's what we're talking about here. Think about who you're talking to. And again, I've had this happen so many times. You're walking through the hall, and somebody's like, "Hey, blah, blah, blah." It's not scripted, it's not a planned meeting, but people want to know what's going on. And so you always have to have these nuggets in your back pocket so you can talk about it. But again, you need to talk to them in a way that's meaningful to them.   Pam Didner: Yeah. I do agree with you. On the sales side, I 100% agree, even with the CRO, chief revenue officers, talking about the sales revenue and the pipelines are very important. And CEO cares about that a lot too. If I talk to a COO, I usually focus on processes. What kind of processes that we are doing, especially on the Martech Stack. On the CTO side of things, if they really care about all the tools that we are using, and I always talk about in terms of how tools are performing, right? There's no tools are downed, and Salesforce, or the CIM, or marketing automation tools are running very nicely. And another thing I will bring into COO and the CTO's attention, it's usually about processes and also how the tool's usage.   Christina Del Villar: Right, yep.   Pam Didner: What's the tool's usage? And to make sure that they understand that part of it. But most of the time I do agree with you, the key things that everybody cares the most tend to be a revenue and growth impact.   Christina Del Villar: Right, right. And that makes sense, because if you think about what your overall corporate objective is, it is usually a revenue number, right?   Pam Didner: Revenue, yeah.   Christina Del Villar: Right? Even if it's an IPO, maybe you're looking at revenue, maybe you're looking at EBITDA, maybe you're looking at number of accounts, or you're going to look at some of the things, but, at the end of the day, you're really looking at that revenue number. And I think the other thing, to your point, that's really important when you're talking to that COO, CIO, CTO, they want to understand, because some of that, oftentimes that budget will come from their budget or they-   Pam Didner: Exactly. To support it.   Christina Del Villar: Right?   Pam Didner: Yeah. Especially in a big enterprise. Yeah.   Christina Del Villar: Where they're putting resources. Absolutely. I can't tell you how many times people are like, "Well, I have this list of all of your... Do you use all of these tools and technology?" And it's like, "Yes."   Pam Didner: "Do we need it? Do we need tools?"   Christina Del Villar: "Do we really need Salesforce? Do you need that?" Right.   Pam Didner: "Yes, how did you use that in the past two years?"   Christina Del Villar: Right. To be fair, there are times when I'm like, "Oh yeah. Okay. We should probably leverage that more or get rid of it." And that's great. It's good to do that kind of an audit. But again, we need to help them understand how these tools are helping us do our job better, and again, getting us to that ultimate corporate goal that we have.   Pam Didner: Understood. So what is one thing that marketers need to do when preparing their communication or presentation to C-suite? If you actually have one advice, what would that be?   Christina Del Villar: Yeah, I would say keep it short.   Pam Didner: I love that. I like that.   Christina Del Villar: I know, right? And it doesn't need to be a fancy, pretty slide. Again, I literally just throw up a number. It's like, "4.5 million this quarter," right?   Pam Didner: Five million. The font size, 78.   Christina Del Villar: Right? Keep it super simple, because what you want is you want them to take that away immediately and then you still need to have that backup material, because they're going to ask more questions about it, which is fine. But I would just say keep it simple and keep it to the point, and again, what it is that they're looking for, right? If the CTO is trying to understand how you're leveraging the technology and, "Do we need all these licenses?" then start with that. If the CEO wants to understand what revenue is happening, talk about that sales pipeline, right? Product really wants to better understand how people are using their product. And marketers tend to have that information because we own all the tools that people are communicating with, whether it's chat or-   Pam Didner: Certainly.   Christina Del Villar: ... things like that. Right? So there's definitely ways that you can consider it. And if you don't know, simply ask them, like, "What motivates you?" Right?   Pam Didner: Just ask.   Christina Del Villar: I know. Have a conversation. Just ask, right? Just ask. It was funny, I had a conversation with an engineering team. I basically made them come to a marketing brown bag once, and they were just like... The fact that they even showed up was great, but they were all on their phones, eating their lunch. And at one point I was like, "Look, this is the role you can help my team. We need data about how our customers are using our products. And we need to get some information on case studies." And suddenly this one guy pops up and he's like, "Oh my God, we have 10 years of usage data. Would that be helpful?" I'm like, "Ah-   Pam Didner: Yeah!   Christina Del Villar: ... yeah. That would be freaking amazing!" And they got all excited about it. And so then they felt like they were part of our process. They were total geeks about the data, so they were deep diving into it. And again, just helping them understand how they can help you and you can help them, and helping them really understand what it is that you are doing and how they can help you as well as you helping them.   Pam Didner: Very nice. Very nice.   Christina Del Villar: Yeah. It was super cute.   Pam Didner: How can people find you?   Christina Del Villar: Yeah. You can find me at christinadelvillar.com. Also, my book is on Amazon, Sway. And I'm on LinkedIn. I love connecting. I love talking about this. I know you do as well, so happy to always chat with people and be their mentor, give advice, just commiserate, whatever.   Pam Didner: Excellent. Well, Christina, it's wonderful to have you. Thank you so much for coming to my show.   Christina Del Villar: Yeah. Thank you.  

Your host, Devonee Thaxton, talks with Pam Didner who is a fierce B2B marketing consultant, author, podcaster, and speaker. Pam Didner has been in the tech and IT segments for over 20 years with experience in Marketing, Sales Enablement, Strategic Planning, Finance, Product Development and Operations. She is the current President of Portland-based consulting firm, Relentless Pursuit, and has advised organizations across the world including Intel, Southwest Airlines, 3M, Sunstar, Cisco, TE Connectivity, and many more. She is the author of books titled Effective Sales Enablement, Global Content Marketing and The Modern AI Marketer, all available for purchase at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. In this episode, they delve into how Pam isn't interested in being a salesperson herself, but wants to be the woman enabling and supporting other salespeople. It's not about being the one who is centerstage, but being the one to shine the spotlight on others. To learn more about Pam's work, visit http://www.pamdidner.com/ (http://www.pamdidner.com/). If you'd like to be a guest on Savvy, Booked, & Blessed, click https://podcast.prosavvyas.com/podcast-guest (HERE).

B2B and tech marketing consultant, Pam Didner, joined Adam and Mark in the Data Basement recently. Pam is the author of 3 books: Global Content Marketing, Effective Sales Enablement, and the Modern AI Marketer. She has given future trends, content marketing, and sales enablement presentations and workshops in the US, Europe, South America, and Asia. Her forte is to create successful global marketing plans that meet the local marketing and sales team's needs. Show Notes and Transcript: https://www.netwisedata.com/accelerating-sales-success-with-account-based-marketing-ft-pam-didner/ Sign up for the Data-Driven Marketer Newsletter Come hang out in the Data Basement on Slack More NetWise: Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin | Web I Blog+Newsletter --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/datadriven/message

With endless logos to choose from, sourcing SalesTech can be a challenge even for the savviest buyers.  It gets even harder if you're responsible for both, Sales AND Marketing technology.  Our guest in this week's episode is a marketer that has driven Sales Enablement for organisations around the globe.  In our conversation, she breaks down the best practice for making purchase decisions, how sales and marketing technologies overlap, how to address sales tech needs as a marketer, and more. Please welcome best-selling author, podcaster, and our go-to expert for sales and marketing alignment, Pam Didner! These are some of the questions we discuss in this episode: There are so many technologies out there claiming to help the sales team. It's overwhelming. How should we go about addressing sales technologies or sales tech? Sales uses SalesTech. Marketing uses MarTech. Are these two overlapping in terms of technology needs? Any duplications or gaps? If I am supporting sales as a marker, what is the starting point to address technology needs? Speaking of sales and marketing working together, ABM comes to mind. Can you talk to us about ABM-specific tech? Here are some of the resources referenced in this episode: Pam Didner's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steffaneyzohrabyan/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/) Pam Didner's Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BuildMarketingSkills/?ref=share (https://www.facebook.com/groups/BuildMarketingSkills/?ref=share) Pam Didner's website: https://pamdidner.com/ (https://pamdidner.com/) Pam's book - Effective Sales Enablement: Achieve sales growth through collaborative sales and marketing 1st Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Sales-Enablement-collaborative-marketing/dp/0749483644/ (https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Sales-Enablement-collaborative-marketing/dp/0749483644/) Connect with Felix Krueger online:https://www.linkedin.com/in/hfkrueger/ ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/hfkrueger/) Where to find The State of Sales Enablement: Website -http://thestateofsalesenablement.com/ ( http://thestateofsalesenablement.com/) LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-state-of-sales-enablement-podcast/ ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-state-of-sales-enablement-podcast/) Apple Podcasts -https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-state-of-sales-enablement/id1558307853 ( https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-state-of-sales-enablement/id1558307853) Spotify -https://open.spotify.com/show/4ceCJYJLuCbTNbRTriOFpe?si=avn_E9EGSNu3gmHfoqJ_6g ( https://open.spotify.com/show/4ceCJYJLuCbTNbRTriOFpe?si=avn_E9EGSNu3gmHfoqJ_6g)

The internet thrives on great content. Somebody has to write it, and while some people say AI could replace writers, that's not going to happen anytime soon.That's a topic I talk about in this week's interview with the expert content marketer, Pam Didner. Smart content marketers write books, articles, or publish content that aligns with a product or service that they create. Non-fiction authors like Pam will write a book about a topic which potential clients find interesting so they may then hire the author. Pam also talks about writing for the sake of writing, which can be fun but it's not necessarily something you do with commercial intent. I've interviewed a number of non-fiction writers for the Become a Writer Today Podcast, and if you like this interview with Pam, check out my chat with Neal Schaffer.In this episode, we discuss:How to make your content stand outWill AI change how content marketers do their jobKey analytics and stats to look out forHow writing a book can boost your careerResources:Pam DidnerNeal Schaffer InterviewThe Modern AI MarketerEffective Sales EnablementGlobal Content MarketingSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/becomeawritertoday)

Sales and marketing teams often disagree on what is a qualified lead, especially in B2B settings. However, when they do manage to work together instead of butting heads, the benefits to the bottom line are obvious. So how can marketers eliminate the struggle to communicate with their sales teams and nurture a more collaborative effort? According to Pam Didner (https://pamdidner.com), clarity around goals is critical but often overlooked. In this episode we'll look at how to clarify what your sales team needs in a lead and how to get there. https://www.theagentsofchange.com/430

AI for Marketing is here! A best-selling author and keynote speaker explains how it can help you grow faster and more profitably with less staff.

Join us in the Krueger Marketing podcast studio this week for another episode of The State of Sales Enablement. We catch up with https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/ (Pam Didner) who is a B2B marketing consultant, podcaster, keynote speaker and author of 3 best-selling books. Some of the questions we discuss include: What are the key areas marketers should consider when introducing sales enablement in their organisation to make it a success? What are the most common pitfalls when sales and marketing are attempting to collaborate? How do you best tackle them? How can sales benefit from existing content marketing infrastructure within their organisation? Which trends can we expect to crystallise in the coming years? What is to be considered for somebody who starts out in a sales enablement role and for somebody who is managing sales enablement globally for the first time? Here are some of the resources referenced in this episode. Sales enablement resources brought to you by Krueger Marketing: https://www.kruegermarketing.com/learn (https://www.kruegermarketing.com/learn) Connect with Pam Didner online: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamdidner/) Connect with Felix Krueger online:https://www.linkedin.com/in/hfkrueger/ ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/hfkrueger/) Where to find The State of Sales Enablement: Website (subscriber exclusives can be found here) -http://thestateofsalesenablement.com/ ( http://thestateofsalesenablement.com/) LinkedIn -https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-state-of-sales-enablement-podcast/ ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-state-of-sales-enablement-podcast/) Apple Podcasts -https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-state-of-sales-enablement/id1558307853 ( https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-state-of-sales-enablement/id1558307853) Spotify -https://open.spotify.com/show/4ceCJYJLuCbTNbRTriOFpe?si=avn_E9EGSNu3gmHfoqJ_6g ( https://open.spotify.com/show/4ceCJYJLuCbTNbRTriOFpe?si=avn_E9EGSNu3gmHfoqJ_6g)

Trying to support sales as a marketer can be painful. Everything is always last minute. They don't know where things are. That's the perception. Unfortunately it's also the reality. People left supporting are left needing all kinds of therapy: aromatherapy, massage therapy, drinking therapy... whatever it takes.  Don't worry: Pam Didner is here to help.  ------ Join me for weekly special LinkedInLive sessions where I interview your favorite guests like Pat Lencioni, Seth Godin, Whitney Johnson, and Kim Scott — LIVE. Here's the one-click invite: https://evt.mx/mSGV4Ka8

Trying to support sales as a marketer can be . . . painful. Everything is always last minute. They don't know where things are. That's the perception. Unfortunately it's also the reality. People left supporting are left needing all kinds of therapy: aromatherapy, massage therapy, drinking therapy . . . whatever it takes.  Don't worry: Pam Didner is here to help.  Be sure to grab tickets for the B2B Sales & Marketing Exchange in August.

The buzz: “Most people that I know are interested in on-demand stuff. Podcasts are essentially audio Netflix” (Jordan Harbinger). In our current digital renaissance, with disruptive breakthrough technologies maturing, an old-school yet cutting-edge marketing tactic is resurging: audio. From podcasts to audio whitepapers, apps to smart speakers, the world of sound is immediate, portable, affordable, customizable, and wherever you go. Are you on-board with audio yet? The experts speak. Pam Didner, Consultant and Author: “The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'” (Alfred Brendel). Kenneth Kinney, AI Media Group: “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus” (Bruce Lee). Ginger Shimp, SAP: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can” (Arthur Ashe). Jeff Janiszewski, SAP: “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing” (Walt Disney). Join us for Hear and Now: Audio Content in Digital Marketing – Part 2.

The buzz: “Most people that I know are interested in on-demand stuff. Podcasts are essentially audio Netflix” (Jordan Harbinger). In our current digital renaissance, with disruptive breakthrough technologies maturing, an old-school yet cutting-edge marketing tactic is resurging: audio. From podcasts to audio whitepapers, apps to smart speakers, the world of sound is immediate, portable, affordable, customizable, and wherever you go. Are you on-board with audio yet? The experts speak. Pam Didner, Consultant and Author: “The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'” (Alfred Brendel). Kenneth Kinney, AI Media Group: “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus” (Bruce Lee). Ginger Shimp, SAP: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can” (Arthur Ashe). Jeff Janiszewski, SAP: “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing” (Walt Disney). Join us for Hear and Now: Audio Content in Digital Marketing – Part 2.

The buzz: Podcasts aren't a bubble, they're a boom—and that boom is only getting louder” (Miranda Katz). In the midst of our current digital renaissance, with breakthrough technologies maturing, an old-school yet cutting-edge marketing tactic is resurging: audio. From podcasts to audio whitepapers, apps to smart speakers, the world of sound is immediate, portable, affordable, customizable, and wherever you go. The experts speak. Pam Didner, Consultant and Author: “Keep it simple stupid” (Kelly Johnson). Kenneth Kinney, AI Media Group: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift…the present” (Alice M. Earle). Ginger Shimp, SAP: “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it” (Henry Ford). Jeff Janiszewski, SAP: “Everyone wants some magic pill—some life hack—that eliminates the need to do the work. But that does not exist” (Jocko Willink). Join us for Hear and Now: Audio Content in Digital Marketing.

The buzz: Podcasts aren't a bubble, they're a boom—and that boom is only getting louder” (Miranda Katz). In the midst of our current digital renaissance, with breakthrough technologies maturing, an old-school yet cutting-edge marketing tactic is resurging: audio. From podcasts to audio whitepapers, apps to smart speakers, the world of sound is immediate, portable, affordable, customizable, and wherever you go. The experts speak. Pam Didner, Consultant and Author: “Keep it simple stupid” (Kelly Johnson). Kenneth Kinney, AI Media Group: “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift…the present” (Alice M. Earle). Ginger Shimp, SAP: “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it” (Henry Ford). Jeff Janiszewski, SAP: “Everyone wants some magic pill—some life hack—that eliminates the need to do the work. But that does not exist” (Jocko Willink). Join us for Hear and Now: Audio Content in Digital Marketing.

Hey Shareable listeners! There’s no doubt we’re living in a rapidly changing world. So, what does that mean for marketing? And for our daily lives? We’re talking all that and more with this week’s guest: Pam Didner! Pam is a B2B and tech marketing consultant, speaker and author of the books Global Content Marketing and Effective Sales Enablement. Pam specializes in sales, marketing and external communications consulting, keynote presentations, corporate training, and workshops. In this episode, we’re talking about everything from AI to sales and marketing to self reflection. Pam also gives some really great advice for those on the job market, with a nice reminder we could all use. Take a listen and don’t forget to subscribe!

Get valuable insights on forward-thinking marketing concepts from Pam Didner, author of Global Content Marketing. Take a dive deep into effective engagement with your customers and connecting your marketing strategy with your sales team. Technology has virtually erased national borders, forever transforming the way we reach and engage customers, as well as the way we search for and consume content. Global Content Marketing takes you step-by-step through the process of creating and refining your strategies to meet this new reality. Learn how to: Create content that engages people–regardless of their country and culture Identify key actions and strategies to apply to your projects Connect “dots” that others don't see and connect them in ways you never thought of before Identify key actions and strategies to apply to your projects Get Pam's book on sale now: https://www.pamdidner.com/books/    ----- Sandler Training is proud to support women in business and was named a Top Franchise for Women in 2018! The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler Training, the worldwide leader in sales, management, and customer service training for individuals all the way up to Fortune 500 companies with over 250 locations around the globe. Sandler's new book is on sale now at Amazon and the Sandler Shop: The Unapologetic Saleswoman

Get valuable insights on forward-thinking marketing concepts from Pam Didner, author of Global Content Marketing. Take a dive deep into effective engagement with your customers and connecting your marketing strategy with your sales team. Technology has virtually erased national borders, forever transforming the way we reach and engage customers, as well as the way we search for and consume content. Global Content Marketing takes you step-by-step through the process of creating and refining your strategies to meet this new reality. Learn how to: Create content that engages people–regardless of their country and culture Identify key actions and strategies to apply to your projects Connect “dots” that others don't see and connect them in ways you never thought of before Identify key actions and strategies to apply to your projects Get Pam's book on sale now: https://www.pamdidner.com/books/    ----- Sandler Training is proud to support women in business and was named a Top Franchise for Women in 2018! The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler Training, the worldwide leader in sales, management, and customer service training for individuals all the way up to Fortune 500 companies with over 250 locations around the globe. Sandler's new book is on sale now at Amazon and the Sandler Shop: The Unapologetic Saleswoman