Conference season

It's conference season for marketing ops, and the only question I seem to be getting asked by vendors and colleagues is: "Are you going to conference XYZ?" I think this is my off year. At least for the big shows. I'm not as closely

Roadshows

When a company hosts their first successful customer conference, it's common to see them decide to take things on the road with regional roadshows under the same banner and concept. And it's common to see these roadshows fail. It's hard to translate the magic

BI & Data

When people outside the profession talk about data science and analysis, they are often imagining BI and data visualization. It's a question of Tableau vs PowerBi vs Domo vs Birst vs whatever else. And data viz is important in conveying meaning to business users. But I think we

The calendar as a to do list

I was talking with a coworker the other day about methods of productivity. His solution is to block time on his calendar for specific tasks. It's similar to Tomasz Tunguz's approach. The concept seems pretty smart on paper. We're constantly dealing with overly ambitious

Learning through accountability

You can now learn a new language or technical skill from dozens of sites online, or in-person courses. If you're anything like me, you idealize yourself completing all of those courses and expanding your knowledge. But the truth is that the majority of those courses we never complete,

80%

If you want to get into homebrewing your own beer, know  this:  80% of the time spent is cleaning. People fall in love with the idea of designing a recipe, throwing in the ingredients, stirring the pot, watching the airlock bubble in the fermentation tank. And that is all fun.

Park on an incline

I keep myself on the hook every day for writing here. It's not always easy - it's often hard to summon the focus required to put even a short few words together. The trick I've found is to sticking with this for the last

Meet your neighbors

We moved into our house nearly four years ago, and I still don't know the names of my neighbors. I didn't intend this - but in the first few weeks of moving in, the time to orient myself in the neighborhood never came. And now it&

Brilliance is overrated

One of the most valuable, yet underrated skills in technical marketers is their ability to relate complex ideas to non-technical audiences. It's nice to design a brilliant lead nurture program, but you also must: a. Document it in a way that your work can be maintained and built

Form over Function

In my early days of using marketing automation, I kept hearing Eloqua had deeper functionality than Marketo. But I had no firsthand experience until now. And as I now use Eloqua on a daily basis, I think the stories are only half true. Take lead scoring for instance.  In Marketo,

Follow up

What often separates a good salesperson from a bad one is  follow up. Did you actually seek out answers to the more technical questions I had on the call? Did you share the documentation and resources I asked for? I'm always surprised how often these steps get missed.

Ground Coffee

When you buy a bag of coffee at the grocery store, or the coffee shop, they always ask if you want your beans ground. It's the default action. Yet if you talk to any coffee snob, or the barista themselves, they'll probably admit that this is