Catch-Up On This Week’s B2B News

Did you find yourself at the BMA Global Conference last week? If you weren’t able to attend, don’t worry – John Ellett wrote a great post in Forbes this week, 7 Top Takeaways From BMA Global Conference, to capture the greatest learnings from the show. Our favorite lesson? To get the biggest bang for your buck out of a presentation you give be sure to make sure you repeat the most important part at the end. “People recall 70% of the opening, 20% of the middle (often considered the “meat” of the presentation) and almost 100% of the closing of a presentation… dynamic white board conversations [also] have better recall and higher impact than traditional PowerPoint presentations.”
Alex Kantrowitz at AdAge also reported on the BMA Global Conference and shared 11 Tips for Making Marketing Automation Work for You from some great B2B leaders that presented there. He quoted a great piece of advice from Heather Burton, Solar Winds director of marketing and demand generation operations. “Don’t let politics interfere. Big software purchases inevitably attract top executives who think they know best. Don’t let that force you into a bad decision, said Ms. Burton. ‘Politics can definitely run rampant in terms of understanding the vendor selections,’ she said. It’s marketers’ job ‘to come to the table with due diligence, the facts and make the business case why for it, or why against it.’”
Mary Velan also had some great advice this week for How to Turn a Conversation With a Customer Into a Sale on B2C. Her best piece of advice: always provide good advice to your prospective and current customers. As Velan notes, “No matter how hard you fight it, there will always be customers who are interested in the product or service, but may not fit into the ideal buyer mold. Rather than focus energies on a sale in the short-term that will not build a trusting relationship, fully nurture a lead and provide unbiased guidance centered on what is in the best interest of the buyer.”