Marketing Interactions

Why is Sales doing Nurturing?

I monitored the recent Sirius Decisions Summit through Twitter and I have to say I wish I was more surprised by some of the postings. Chad Horenfeldt from Anything Goes Marketing has an excellent summary of Tweets about the conference, so go there to see the other stuff. It's all serious (pun intended) food for thought.

The ones I want to talk about are these:

jblock: Only 32% of sales and marketing orgs work together to define programs for existing customers. @megheuer #sds09

cahidalgo: #sds09- 59% of attendees do not believe their sales and marketing are aligned.

jblock: 5%-10% of leads that are sitting in your CRM system as "dead" can become real opportunities if put into a nurturing program. #sds09

megheuer: #sds09 21% of attendees have a lead nurturing program in place now; twice that number are "working on it"

jblock: Focus is not so much at the top of the funnel; it has shifted to pipeline acceleration and sales enablememt. #sds09

RT @megheuer @damphoux: Barry Trailer, CSO Insights "Lead Nurturing - 42% suprisingly left to Sales" #sales20 (oppty for mktg to step up!)

The above statistics should make marketers sit up and take notice. We're challenged by our management more and more to quantify the results marketing produces, yet we're still heaping a lot of the process of creating opportunities on our sales teams. Even worse, many B2B companies are executing the marketing-to-sales process without being in sync.

With buyers in control and choosing with whom and when they want to interact — read pushing sales conversations later in their buying process — it's time to ask yourself about the impact of disconnected communication activity on your prospects and customers.

This lack of alignment gets even more concerning when you consider that only a third of sales and marketing teams work together on existing customer programs. And these are for people who already spend money with you. So, yes, why don't marketing and sales go to customers with their own distinct messaging and confuse the heck out of them. I'm sure it makes total sense in some universe to actually apply effort to create inconsistency that sends the underlying message that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing. I just can't imagine where that might be.

Okay, I'm ranting. I'll stop...maybe.

I'm glad to see that a majority of the attendees at the summit are working on establishing a nurturing program. And congrats to the 21% that have one. Go after that 5-10% of leads you can turn into real opportunities. Re-engaging leads you've already spent money, time and effort to attract makes a huge amount of sense, not to mention and additional revenue.

With the focus shifting from lead gen to pipeline momentum and sales enablement, marketing has a prime opportunity to step up.

Pipeline momentum isn't generated by salespeople calling to say, "I'm just touching base to see if you're ready to buy." Where's the value in that for the prospect? Even worse, since when is that kind of conversation a worthy use of a salesperson's time?

Pipeline momentum is created through strategic nurturing that shares valuable ideas that help prospects address the problems they're grappling to solve. The extension is that it sets them up for sales conversations that progress buying intentions.

Pipeline momentum happens when your marketing content is designed to help prospects visualize how to get the outcomes they need. And, it especially happens when your content helps get conversations going between buying committee members that helps them anchor more favorably to your ideas and expertise raising the value quotient for your company on their terms.

Salespeople aren't primed for hand holding over the long term. They have short-term goals and responsibilities that aren't suited to nurturing responsibility. Plus, each salesperson sells differently. That's quite often how messaging and storylines get mixed up if they enter the buying process too soon. Telling a story over the long term works best when it's consistently told to reinforce ideas, concepts and insights.

In a recent interview of Joe Galvin, VP and Research Director of Sirius Decisions, Mike Damphousse asked him: "...what can a quota carrying sales rep do on their own to help get that all important discussion with a real prospect?"

Joe's response begins: "First, they should take advantage of and capitalize on every qualified lead sent to them by marketing. Our benchmark data shows that marketing contributes between 18 and 34% of the sales pipeline depending on segment."

And that's one great reason why marketing should be nurturing. Imagine what might happen if marketing was contributing twice that amount and sales could stay focused on live, highly viable opportunities.

In order for pipeline momentum to continue fluidly from marketing communications to sales conversations, alignment in the story that gets told is critical. This will only happen if marketing and sales work together to create that story and base it on the buyer's perspective.

As Joe Galvin says, "Clients and prospects are overwhelmed by public domain information. As a sales professional in 2009 you must be able to tell them something they don’t know or can’t find on their own to gain their attention and respect." If marketing is working to enable sales to validate and extend the story they've told prospects during nurturing, they can set salespeople up to do just that.

Having salespeople perform nurturing when they're supposed to be — and are likely focused on — selling can be like tossing the prospects marketing has worked very hard to engage straight over to your competitors. The equivalent of saying, "Hey - are you short on opportunities? Let me give you some of ours."

Sales doesn't need the responsibility of nurturing. Keep them focused on serving opportunities so well they can't help but buy from you. Marketing needs to step up and claim the nurturing domain. And then measure for pipeline improvements. I'll bet you'll be amazed at what happens.

And that will serve as further justification for marketing and sales to align.

Finally, great post today by Megan Heuer on the Sirius Decisions Blog that backs me up! So glad I looked: Marketing Needs to Be More Nurturing

B2B Content Marketing to Impact Status Quo

Earlier this week I talked about the payoff for B2B content marketing to focus on producing movement. Now, I'd like to back up just a tad and share some thoughts about what it takes to shift status quo. Because until or unless you can get people to shift from status quo, the movement you'll get from your B2B marketing content will be, well, zip.

So back up to the situations your prospects are facing and look at the severity of the pain they're dealing with. Ask the question, what would it take to make embracing change worthwhile FOR THEM?

If the answer isn't around a pretty impressive "shift" from where they are now, they won't change. It's not worth the effort, risk and stress. It's easier to stick with the devil we know, right? That's human nature.

Before you can develop a content strategy for complex sale nurturing, you've got to define the reasons why your prospect's would rather be inert than active about solving the problem.

Resistance to change can be about:

• aversion to making a mistake
• uncertain about what to do
• concern about what they don't know
• lack of justification and/or validation for the change
• overwhelming complexity
• losing face and professional standing
• influence of bad past experiences
• and more...

Many of these ripple beneath the surface and are not obvious from an outside view, but that doesn't mean they don't count. The point is that when all these thoughts are going on inside your prospect's head, your content has to produce a pretty big shift in thinking—and potential opportunity—to outweigh all that internal chatter.

In order to sway tolerance for status quo you've got to build a story that helps portray the movement toward outcomes your prospects consider important, while addressing resistance factors at the same time.

Talk about a result you know your prospects are challenged to achieve and the problem that's causing it to persist.

• Faster time to market impacted by supply chain issues
• Better decisions for action ahead of your competitor's advances.

Let them know that they're not the only ones facing the problem and that they don't have to take it anymore.

• Related industry trends and research data used in support of urgency.
• Customers like them who've successfully dealt with the issue at hand.

Showcase the impact in a context they understand.

• A CFO will get the impact of percentages of improvement against margins.
• An LOB manager strapped for human resources will get the impact of more hours to apply to priority projects.

Using active words to simulate the impact of your ideas can help. Business impact is evaluated based on whether it makes something go up (e.g. revenues) or brings something down (e.g. expenses):

Up words: increase, accelerate, escalate, raise, grow, gain, add, boost, ramp, scale, extend, expand, improve, attain, acquire, amplify, win

Down words: decrease, minimize, reduce, diminish, lessen, shorten

Do not mistake active words for buzz words and product features. If you do this then you end up with a bunch of gobbledygook that has no meaning for your prospects.

Focus on helping your prospects visualize the impact of how your ideas and expertise (not your product alone) will position them for success. People buy outcomes, not widgets.

But the real trick in moving people from status quo is also in the size of the shift they'll experience if they listen to you and take action. You've got to do some research and discover what that means for them. Then quantify it through expanding the idea to get them to reach farther than just solving the current problem.

For example: It may be appealing for an LOB manager to gain 40 hours back each month in man hours, but to push them to actively explore change, consider addressing what that means in real terms. What could they do with that 40 hours that makes not taking action to get those hours back unthinkable?

To shift status quo, it's also helpful to focus on short term gains. Long-term goals are important, but if getting to the good stuff is too far out, it's harder to vote for change. They won't see the pain diminishing fast enough to take action. We live in an instant gratification world. It's wise not to forget that in your B2B marketing communications.

Payoff for B2B Content Marketing is Movement

For some reason, B2B marketers tend to jump the gun when reacting to prospect behavior. Just because someone accesses your content doesn't mean they're sales ready. In fact, if you treat prospects that way—without a darned good reason—you've missed the point.

Here's an example to consider:

A company with a complex sale sees an average buying cycle time of 6 to 8 months.

Their nurturing strategy includes 7 touches orchestrated over the period of 30 days.

These touches include a combination of phone calls and emails.

All of you have probably experienced these kinds of campaigns. I know I have. But, here's the rub; pestering a prospect to move faster makes them dig in their heels and stay stuck, or even reverse their intention to change. [Think delete, unsubscribe and voicemail jail.]

Why? You've just scared the bejezus out of them. It's the equivalent of walking into a car dealership and getting the hard sell. Nobody likes to be pushed. Especially when we're "just looking."

The goal of marketing content should be to produce incremental movement.

Movement doesn't mean leaping from I downloaded your white paper to I'm ready to buy. Believe me, if they were, they'd contact you on their own.

Consider the idea of movement in small steps across their buying process:

From: Who are these guys? I'll take a chance and click this link to see. 

To: Hmm. That was an interesting article.

From: Oh, another article on this topic.  

To: They have good information. I'll forward it to Joe and see what he thinks.

From: Oh, good. A webinar showcasing a customer like me.    

To: I'll go register and see how these guys solved the problem.

From: Ah, they simplified the complexity. This might work for us.

To: Now, I have a question.

From: Good answer. Thanks for the follow-up links, too!

To: I can tell my boss about this.

It reads faster, but all of that happened over the course of about two and a half months. It was comfortable for the prospect and gave them time to choose to participate at their own pace. Granted, it's a simplified view, but what's important is that each content resource worked to produce movement.

Not huge leaps in movement, but incremental steps that build a relationship over time. The benefits of building relationships over the long haul are numerous. When each marketing touch point demonstrates consistency, care and a valuable exchange, your prospect's confidence in you—and themselves—increases. They begin to trust the interactions they have with your content and communications.

They don't feel threatened that you're going to pounce on them with a sales pitch as soon as they raise their hand for dialogue.

They can begin to visualize getting the results you're talking about by solving their problem in the way you recommend. You're becoming a valuable resource they can rely upon.

This is why it's important to map content to buying stages. You've got to plan touch points across the entire buying cycle. If you cram everything into a fraction of that time, you stand to lose all the prospects who have a longer horizon. Not to mention driving potential customers away when you're too aggressive and annoying.

Your buyers are busy. All their day-to-day responsibilities don't just vaporize when they have a new problem or priority to solve. There's a lot of complexity to work out. There are a lot more people involved in the process. Every dime they spend has to produce results, and there's that risk element that slows down everything else.

Marketing effectiveness will improve when your content and communications are focused on helping buyers solve problems at their own pace. Nudges are acceptable. Trying to push people to buy because you have sales goals to meet is not.

So plan the goals for your marketing content around producing incremental forward movement. Then monitor for patterns of acceleration and create more content paths like that to pull buyers forward—because they choose to take that next step with your company. Not because you decided they should.

B2B Content Marketing Tips

ClickInsights, the Connect the Docs blog, is providing a series of interviews that include one meaty tip from a variety of experts to help marketers meet the challenge of creating better engagement with their prospects.

In this week's interview, they asked 5 B2B marketing experts,

"If you could give our readers one tip on how B2B marketers should do content marketing, what would that be?" 

The slide deck below is a preview of what you'll find in the interview blog post.

ClickInsights: Tips on how B2B marketers should do Content Marketing

View more presentations from Ambal Balakrishnan.

Tip Topics include:

• Map Content to Buying Stages
• For every claim you make in your content, ask yourself “So What?”
• Differentiate Your Content
• Educate, Entertain and Engage with Readers
• Know Your Customer

Each expert also shares some recommendations of resources and books you may find helpful. Go read the interview.

Other related posts include:

The Content Marketers - List of Lists Part 1 and Part 2

Why B2B Salespeople Say they Win Software Sales

Take a look at the chart below, graciously provided by CSO Insights. If you're a B2B software marketer, this may not be inspiring. However, what's interesting to note is what  sales execs determine are the leading competitive reasons why their reps win deals.

Looking at this from the other end of the funnel and comparing the views of companies who win more than 60% of the deals they're after (blue) vs. those who don't shows some interesting differences.

I'd love to know if their customers agree with how these stack up, but that's another story.

Here are a few things I find deserving of attention for those of us looking at this process from the top end of the funnel:

Marketing Messaging is last on the list for those who win the most. Is this because marketing messaging is so bad or because it's not integrated across the sales process, so sales reps lack visibility into what's driving opportunities to them?

Existing Relationships and References hold the 2nd and 3rd spots for those who win more. This is a critical point and plays into how hard your company works to build relationships after customer acquisition, as well as nurture your customers along by providing new ideas and insights over the full course of the relationship. 

I also think it relates to your company's credibility and reputation in the marketplace.

What role is marketing playing here? Or is this a direct reflection of the relationships the sales reps have built. Shouldn't be heavily reliant on one or the other, but a shared responsibility of both sales and marketing.

Sales process is rated much higher by those who win more.

Contrast this to service and support which are rated higher by those who win less.

Interesting dichotomy, don't you think?

Finally, I find it good to know that both sides agree ROI is equally important from either view. What I fail to understand is why it's so far down the list for those who win more deals.

If ROI wasn't a factor, would your product be superior?

Would your customers still have relationships with you or provide references if they received a limited return on their investment with you? If there was no ROI, would it matter how good your sales process is?

If you, as a marketer, had to rate these factors for why your company wins deals, how would your choices differ from sales?

What other things do you see in this chart worth thinking about?

What are your B2B leads doing?

With B2B digital marketing, measuring KPIs has got to go beyond basic activity. Otherwise it's just clicks. Clicks won't get you anything unless they result in sales somewhere down the trail.

This focus on activity without regard to sales is most likely a carryover from the time when digital marketing meant a standalone email campaign that couldn't be tracked much farther. One addition to email clicks and opens might have been to monitor traffic to the URL specific to the marketing message—provided it wasn't otherwise accessible.

But, today, that's just not good enough. With marketing tasked to quantify business value delivery, they've got to reach much farther and prove impact to pipeline progression and, ultimately downstream revenues.

And, now—yes—I'm going to state again that it's important to use marketing automation technology. Without it, you can't track much that's relevant to those outcomes. Plus, many of these systems also integrate with CRM systems providing marketing visibility across the pipeline to the end result of wins, no decision or lost deals.

Some of the measurements marketing needs to be able to show include:

• lead progression across buying stages
• impact on pipeline growth
• rate of contact-to-lead transition
• growth in lead-to-opportunity conversions (sales-accepted)
• individual vs. aggregate behavioral trends
• reduction in time to revenue
• increase in dollar volume - nurtured vs. not

In order to measure these types of metrics, they need to be built into your marketing campaigns before you launch them. In fact, I'd wager that any marketing program launched without a focus on something related to the above list will not help marketing prove the value they're delivering in relation to the related dollars the business is spending in hopes of achieving them.

Now, before you run screaming from the room, this stuff takes time. So, the sooner you get started, the better.

It won't work to try and achieve results reported by other companies. You've got to benchmark where you are now and work to beat your own numbers. Otherwise you'll make yourselves nuts by trying to compare persimmons to pecans.

That said, paying attention to what your B2B leads are doing is the first step in trying to get them to do more of it. How you structure your campaigns (read use content) will play a critical role. But as soon as you realize that all activity is not created with the same value, you're on the right track.

Create More Client Loyalty - Special Report

One of the top two objectives for marketers this year is to improve their ability to retain customers. We often get so caught up in generating new demand that we forget that we've got customers who can continue to benefit from the relationship they have with us.

But for that to happen productively [for both sides] we need to focus on making sure they have a good reason to stick around.

To help you out, Rain Today asked 9 experts to contribute answers to this question:

If you could only give one piece of advice regarding how to develop client loyalty: what would that be?

They've taken those answers and compiled a Special Report to provide insights steps businesses can take to ensure that their customers stay loyal. And, let us not forget, loyalty swings both ways. It's up to marketing to treat customers like they want their customers to treat the company in return.

The report includes the following advice and authors. I'm honored to be included.

Achieving the Highest Level of Loyalty
Andrew Sobel, Author of All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships

How to Be Invaluable
Jill Konrath, Author of Selling to Big Companies

Your Highest Priority: Building Client Loyalty by Delivering Superior Service
Michael W. McLaughlin, Principal of MindShare Consulting and Author of Winning the Professional Services Sale

Client Loyalty: How to Keep Happy Clients Who are Delighted to Pay Their Bills
Larry Bodine, Esq., Founder of Apollo Business Development

Taming the Search-and-Switch Client: 3 Keys to Keeping Your Client Loyal
Jill Griffin, Author of Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World

Your Clients Need Cultivation - Now, More Than Ever!
Ardath Albee, CEO and B2B Strategist of Marketing Interactions, Inc.

How to Retain Clients: Teach Them How to Be Loyal
Sharon Drew Morgen, Author of Selling with Integrity

Client Loyalty as a By-Product of Firm Leadership
Patrick J. Lamb and Nicole N. Auerbach, Two of the Founding Members of Valorem Law Group, LLC.

Go Download your complementary report - only an email is requested.

How much revenue is sitting idle in your pipeline?

In times like these, there's just no excuse for letting revenue opportunities idle in your pipeline. This is a huge reason why marketing needs visibility across the buying process—from start to finish.

Once leads are handed off to sales, they need follow-up and continued engagement to encourage that final burst of momentum that convinces them to become your customers. For some reason there's an irritating hard stop at the point when marketing hands leads off to sales.

This is probably because:

• Marketing thinks their job is done.
• Sales doesn't want marketing stepping on their toes.

This results in marketing ceasing to nurture leads passed to sales.

But, if sales doesn't take action—and research shows sales only works about 30% of the leads marketing gives them—then your leads go cold. That's a big waste of investment already sunk into generating and nurturing those leads.

So what do you do?

Here are several ideas about how to increase the revenue flow from your pipeline:

1. Develop a reciprocal SLA between sales and marketing.
   
   • Get agreement on requirements for a qualified lead.
   • Establish and agree to a timeline for sales to formally accept them.
   • Have sales agree to contact accepted leads within a specific time period.
   • If sales passes on a lead, make sure they can hand them back to marketing with an explanation for the rejection. That way marketing knows what needs to happen to get the lead accepted in the future.
2. Create a Sales Enablement Handoff Brief
   
   • Help salespeople get up to speed fast and take action in line with the lead's expectations.
   • Provide the lead's activity history during nurturing.
   • Include an overview of the related nurturing program.
   • Given the lead's last interaction, provide conversational snippets, messaging and collateral suggestions to help sales initiate a conversation.
3. Integrate extended Nurturing into the Sales Process
   
   • Marketing can create nurturing touches on behalf of the assigned sales rep and execute for them until the salesperson indicates it's no longer necessary.
   • Make sure the sales rep knows what marketing is doing.
   • Shift the messaging for late-stage buyers.
4. Facilitate the Introduction of the Sales Rep to the Lead
   
   • Humanize the process. When you want to introduce one person to another, you don't just hand off their contact info and walk away. You introduce them. Why shouldn't the same respect be paid to people you hope to do business with? It really is about the relationship. People buy from people.

The whole point is that marketing and sales need to work together to keep the momentum going. The more personal you can make the lead's transition to sales, the more credibility the relationship will have.

By putting processes in place to ensure lead progression continues at the transition, you've got much better odds that your leads will actually become customers. Arming salespeople to step seamlessly into the relationship is something marketing can help accomplish.

And, it doesn't have to be difficult. Marketing automation systems can give you a lot of this information on request. When you do your research and content development, create those last two pieces of the sales enablement handoff brief. Likewise, design your introduction email message.

By integrating these bridging activities into your marketing strategy they easily flow from the other work you're already doing to build your nurturing programs. And, by increasing marketing's visibility into the sales side, they can take action when sales reps are too busy closing other deals to pay attention to each new lead that comes their way.

Without that insight, a lot of your leads may be just sitting in your pipeline. But, while they may look idle to you, your competitors are out there catching their attention. And, don't you just hate it when that happens?

Does your B2B website cut sales costs?

According to a recent survey done by Forrester Research with Marketing Profs, "94% of respondents consider corporate Web sites a key element in the marketing toolbox and 84% of buyers say Web sites matter in purchase decision making."

That said, Laura Ramos also points out that most B2B corporate websites "lack the basic building blocks to build customer relationships."

It's time for B2B companies to regard their corporate websites with a more flexible mindset. This is no time for turf battles, ego or company posturing. If your corporate website isn't playing a key role in generating qualified prospects and enhancing customer relationships, it's not doing its job.

You know that buyers are waiting longer to involve sales in their buying process. Longer sales cycles mean escalating sales costs. By enabling your website to deliver better information in formats your buyers find valuable, marketers can transform their website visitors from tire kickers into interested, active prospects.

Here's a little test for you to evaluate your corporate website for engagement:

1. Choose a problem your customers solve using your products.
2. Go to your website as if an unfamiliar website and see how many clicks it takes you to get to relevant information. (you don't know your product names, either)
3. What information exists to help your buyers in different stages of their buying process?
4. Is there a natural flow to how they access this information or does every piece of it have to be found separately? You know - white papers in the white paper section, case studies in the case study section, etc.
5. Now look at navigational paths in your website analytics and see how your website visitors are moving through your website.
   
   Can you tell when they find something of value?
   Where are you losing them?

Corporate websites are often arranged based on separate categories. Almost all of them have solutions, industries, products, company on their navigation. Is that how your buyers want their information?

Start thinking about the words you use and how you present that information.

• Can you orient it around problems and priorities on your buyers' minds?
• Can you combine content to tell a threaded story instead of asking your website visitors to spend their time searching unfamiliar territory?
• What types of interactions could you add to help?
  
  For example, Genius customers are getting great results by chatting with prospective customers in real time about the subject matter displayed on the page the prospect is on.
  
  Do you have newsletter subscriptions available for specific interests?
  
  Can they sign up for webinars on the subject?
  
  How about videos and podcasts with a way to share them with others on the buying committee?

The more information you can provide to buyers across the stages of their buying process, the higher impact you'll see in lowering sales costs. Salespeople will be focused on the most interested opportunities, the ones who raise their hands. Self-identification will happen when your website serves buyers well because they'll have learned what they need to know to build their confidence that your company is the right partner to choose.

B2B websites can be very powerful sales tools if companies start designing them as an integral part of a customer-focused buying process and not as a digital version of their corporate brochure.

CMOs lack credibility with CEOs

The CMO Club recently polled its members about who has the most credibility with the CEO. Results show:

• 31% CFO
• 24% Head of Sales
• 13.8% CMO

While I'm not surprised to see CFO or Head of Sales ahead of the CMO, I am disappointed in the low percentage equated to CMOs—by CMOs. That said, I think CMOs are in a tough position where they've got to make the transition from vague marketing reports to hard-hitting proof points reflecting their contribution to business objectives on the CEO's agenda.

In response to the poll, The CMO Club asked respondents to provide some insight to their ratings. Their reasoning includes:

• CEO interest in the reports provided.
• Speaking the same language.

CEOs spend more time with CFOs and heads of sales because their priorities include managing the company's coffers and filling the company's coffers—ultimately increasing shareholder value.

If marketing wants to be considered a core pillar of their company's success, they need to pay some attention to perception. One of the best ways to do this is to build better relationships with those who do have the CEO's ear—the CFO and the head of sales.

Sort of like influencing the influencers.

Reports need to focus on things like:

• increase in sales-qualified leads
• increase in pipeline progression
• contribution to reduction of sales cycle 
• reduction in customer defections
• efficiency of budget spend related to outcomes produced

Focusing reports on lead generation numbers and growth in presumptive customer affinity doesn't mean anything unless it results in deals closed or customer contract renewals. For reports to merit attention, they must prove marketing initiatives are helping to produce business results.

This is why it's imperative for CMOs to work hand-in-glove with heads of sales. In order to gain insights that reflect high-impact contributions in reporting, marketing needs visibility across the sales process after the handoff. The farther into the pipeline marketing can provide assistance that enables sales to win more deals, faster, the more ammunition they have for hard-hitting reports CFOs will want to see.

When the CFO sees value in the efficiency of the budget spend in regards to the results produced, you've given them something to talk to the CEO about. And, you've safeguarded your budgets. When heads of sales can report higher sales, their professional status soars.

Think about this for a minute. Marketing spends a lot of time (or should) helping prospects and customers learn how to solve problems. In order to do that they learn the language thier buyers speak and they use it to increase relevance. They focus on high priority issues from the buyer's perspective.

Any of this ring a bell?

Well, why can't CMOs apply the same strategy to elevate their status with those who have the CEO's attention?

The more you help someone, the more they're inclined to repay the favor. That's human nature. Plus, they won't want you to stop.

If CMOs can get CFOs and heads of sales to sing their praises, CEOs will start taking notice of marketing as more than just a department that exists because, well, they're supposed to have one.

Update 5/12/09: suggested addition to report bullets up above by @treehousei via Twitter - hard dollar campaign ROI - Thanks Chris! Although often hard to do based on specific campaigns depending on sales cycle time if you're measuring throughput.