Best Practices & Research to Make Your Marketing Operation More Effective

Marketing Ops Journal

Insights & Tips

Already a subscriber? Login

Become a subscriber and unlock an information arsenal focused on building effective marketing operations.

The Missing Link in Your Marketing Operation

Imagine your car is missing a wheel. Could it still get you where you wanted to go? Eventually, maybe—but it would be an extremely painful journey, right?

Now imagine that your marketing operation is missing a critical function—that an entire process or capability just doesn’t exist in your business. Might that explain why performance levels aren’t where you’d like them to be? Could that be the reason it’s so damned hard to get where you want to go?

I started pondering these questions after reading a book entitled, The Truth About Leads, by Dan McDade. And when I interviewed Dan for the Marketing Ops Journal, my thoughts coalesced and I came to an uncomfortable conclusion:

Many B2B companies struggle with lead generation because they’re lacking a true prospect development function. It’s like they’re trying to put together a puzzle without having all of the pieces!

In the book and interview, Dan identifies the root-causes behind so many of the lead generation and prospecting “challenges” we’ve all experienced. And he does a great job of explaining what real prospect development looks like—how it works, who does what, and when.

And once that picture was painted for me, I realized something else:

Never in my entire 20+ year career as a marketing practitioner and consultant, have I worked with a B2B company that had a real prospect development capability. Marketing? Sure. Inside Sales? Yup. Outside Sales? Of course. Sales Ops? Check. CRM and marketing automation? You betcha.

But even with these groups and toolsets, true prospect development just wasn’t happening—at least not in the consistent, methodical, and effective way that I now know is possible.

So…if you’re wondering if your lead generation and prospecting processes are as effective as they really could be, I encourage you to check out Dan’s interview and book. And while I could be wrong, I’d be willing to bet at least a brew (or two) that your lead generation puzzle is missing a piece, too—a really big piece.

 

Discover the exclusive tools and research that subscribers get access to.

Take Our Quick Tour

Related Resources

  • How Customers Evaluate a Price

    We'd like to think that customers are always rational when they consider the price on a deal...but they aren't. In this guide, Mark Dresdner exposes eight factors that play an important role when a potential customer evaluates a price.

    View This Guide

  • Exposing the Power of Price Elasticity in B2B

    Price elasticity is incredibly underutilized and often misunderstood. Barrett Thompson explains the nature of price elasticity in B2B and how you can use it to set better prices with far less risk.

    View This Interview

  • From Gathering Research to Generating Leads

    What happens when a content marketing firm decides to actually practice what it preaches? They develop a repeatable marketing program that generates a whopping 250% more qualified leads! In this interview, Paul Salvaggio opens the kimono on this successful campaign.

    View This Interview

  • Comprehensive B2B Marketing Self-Assessment

    To help identify areas for improvement, simply answer the questions in this straightforward assessment as truthfully and objectively as possible. While this comprehensive assessment covers 10 major areas and contains more than 130 questions, it should take you less than 30 minutes to complete.

    View This Tool