If you build it they’ll come moments

Baseball field at night being built

Baseball field at night being built

Lowell McAdam, the CEO of Verizon, told analysts, “This is going to be one of those if-you-build-it-they’ll-come moments…” He was explaining at the JP Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom conference why Verizon plans to keep investing in microcells and attaching them to buildings.

It’s the same reason John Donovan told analysts at the Citi Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference why AT&T was boosting its network capacity. When network speeds get faster, new technologies spring up to consume that speed. According to Donovan, “5G is different because its performance is so much better that it’s going to enable a whole bunch of new-to-the-world use cases, whether it’s live maps, autonomous cars, virtual reality.” We are indeed witnessing an if-you-build-it-they’ll-come moment for telecom.

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Your best hire is an entrepreneur—how this unique candidate creates value

Illustration: 2 bright light bulbs swinging on the left. 3 regular bulbs hanging straight down

Illustration: 2 bright light bulbs swinging on the left. 3 regular bulbs hanging straight down

Can entrepreneurs make great employees? Randy Skattum, Global Marketing Communications Director for Celanese – a Dallas-based, Fortune 500 diversified materials company – thinks so.

I sought Randy’s advice about integrating my entrepreneurial skills into a big company. Here’s what Randy had to say about my career pivot.

Eisaiah: Great to meet you, Randy. What has been your experience with entrepreneurship?

I started my career in strategic consulting. In that business, you have to be an entrepreneur. You are selling yourself as a solution to colleagues and clients.

Your intellectual capital is your product – your skills, your network, and your experience. You put that capital to work – and if successful – you continue to grow in your capabilities across projects and leverage your investments in yourself with new opportunities.

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It’s a Major Award!

Congratulations to Ken Wheaton at Advertising Age for winning an “Oscar” for B2B journalism. I am a reader of AdAge. It is a valuable publication for marketing professionals.

KEN WHEATON

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Last Friday, the annual Jesse H. Neal Awards Ceremony was held in Manhattan. According to the folks who run the awards, the Neals “are the most prestigious editorial honors in the field of specialized journalism.” I always describe it as the Oscars of B2B journalism.

I wasn’t there last Friday. I don’t work at Ad Age any longer and while the Ad Age family was kind enough to invite me to the ceremony, Cara and I were on our way to Philadelphia. Thankfully, you don’t have to be present to win. Because I finally won. Yours truly took home the award for Best Commentary.

This year’s work included me screaming at the media about their lack of Louisiana flood coverage, me pointing out the absurdity of pharmaceutical advertising, and me noting that gender diversity isn’t the ad industry’s biggest diversity problem.

I was a finalist the previous…

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Some time gaps need to be expanded, not closed

Only a few Dallas drivers follow at a two-second stopping distance. Maybe this is why I crawl past two and three accidents every day on my way to work.

Generally, my blog is about designing business-to-business (B2B) marketing that shortens the customer journey. This takes focus and mental energy. Accident-related traffic erodes mental energy. Today at Toastmasters, I raised the issues of following too closely and distracted driving.

My assignment from the competent communication manual was Speech 2: Organize Your Speech. Below is the transcript.

Speech: While Driving, Keep Distance

Thank you for that warm introduction, Mr. Toastmaster.

Good morning! Last week, I left my house at 6:15am to drive to our meeting. Five minutes into my drive, brake lights lit up all around me.

A firetruck was blocking the fast lane on the 30. Ambulance and police lights flashed. There was a car wreck. I got onto the 635 freeway. Five minutes on the 635 freeway and the scene repeated itself. I passed the second accident. As I was taking the off-ramp, I found myself admiring a dark green, sleek Jaguar – as it cut me off.

I pulled into the parking lot here at Denny’s and breathed a sigh of relief. This story happened last Wednesday, but it happens every day in Dallas.

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Demo B2B chatbot connects micro-moments, converts leads

Two tape reels over molten lava with the gap going in between both – almost breaking. To illustrate "lead decay."

If you are a business to business (B2B) marketer, the chances are you have read Google’s research on micro-moments. You optimized your content for I-want-to-know moments. But are your salespeople arriving quickly enough when prospects want to talk to a human? This article is about closing time gaps between I-want-to-know­ and ­I-wanna-talk-to-a-human moments so you can convert more leads from your website.

Two tape reels over molten lava with the gap going in between both – almost breaking. To illustrate

Imagine 10 prospects are on your website right now. Each is typing her name, email, phone number and clicking ‘Contact me.’

Then what? iPhones will ding! Colleagues will knock on doors. By the end of the first hour, your sales people will people dial­. And 9 out of the 10 prospects will hit ‘reject call’ according to this study from InsideSales.com.

I have a term for this; I call it lead decay.

Lead decay operates in the time gaps between I-want-to-know and I-wanna-talk-to-a-human moments. If you could close these time gaps, you could have a major opportunity to stop lead decay and grow sales. That is what a chatbot can do; this article shows you how.

How a B2B chatbot helps a real human

Step with me into a parallel universe –

You work in marketing for SureCourse Business Solutions, and I am a project manager in the marketing department for a bank in Dallas. Here is how your chatbot helps my bank become a customer:

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What’s the value of a head start?

Horse crossing finish line
A head start along with 1 – 2% productivity growth becomes a sizable advantage

Early this morning, I was running on the treadmill and listening to an economics lecture by professor Timothy Taylor.

He said the year 1870 kicked off our modern era of economic growth. If you take the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of productivity, of the richest countries in the world in 1870 and compare them to the poorest countries, the ratio is 9:1.

By 1990 and the ratio widens to 45:1.

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Duplicate Data: Performing quantitative risk analysis for lead generation

Neon blue, red, yellow, dark blue, orange, green white polkadotted blurs on a background
Duplicates in your Salesforce.com CRM cause mirky lead attribution, poor results.

As I blogged on on February 28, I met a gentleman whose lead generation agency is tasked with generating leads for a healthcare services company.

I asked him, “Does your client have a master data management strategy?” The answer was no.

The client is a large organization. They have millions of records of legacy data in Siebel and they are migrating to Salesforce CRM and Pardot. This legacy data could be a great asset if the client had a master data management system in place. The client does not, and this poses a risk for the lead generation agency.

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