After years of hype, the reality of marketing-led growth is finally sinking in — And this time, I’m sure it’s more than my wishful thinking. In the past 6 months, virtually every RFP I’ve read from enterprise-level B2B marketers has been about two things: Driving demand and revenue through marketing, and Understanding customer needs and jobs better. I’ll start with the first ask. And…

You can’t hide the true human cost of treating people like machines in the balance sheet — Post-2020 conventional hierarchies are still being scrapped and reimagined, because there’s no turning back from two years of flexible work. Companies looking to attract and retain talented people need to offer more choices in projects, work hours, and locations. Tech companies and agencies have had a head start in managing…

You’re probably aware of the fabled growth hack where Airbnb used professional photographers to improve the quality of listings with no cost to the host — But did you know that in the early days, those professional photographers were the founders themselves? Let’s get side-tracked for a bit. I’m willing to bet that you’re aware of your boss’s quirky habits and anxieties at work — perhaps even more so than she is.

Forrester predicts that most B2B marketing will be going to be account-based. — At the start of 2021, 66% of B2B marketers told Forrester they had already been using ABM for at least a year. It’s showing results too. One of the companies reported hitting 276% of their pipeline target using direct mail targeted to key accounts. Not just that, they also hit…

Here’s the one thing that separates great leaders from go-getters — Peter Isenberg led a group of traders at a global investment bank. He was a go-getter. Not as knowledgeable as he would’ve liked to be, but that didn’t stop him from directing trades in markets he knew little about. The harder he tried, the worse it got. One day the…

The responsibilities that come with leadership are often too many to fit neatly into a job description — Many new leaders get overwhelmed and fall prey to the most common misconception in management: ‘I am my numbers.’ Getting your team to follow through on your plan isn’t enough. You need buy-in from your peers, other teams, and your superiors — which isn’t easy. Because to succeed you need…

I help business and marketing leaders identify and get past the hurdles stopping them from reaching their growth objectives — By default this requires keeping an open mind and looking for the details that can point me in the right direction. As Ray Dalio famously wrote in his book Principles: You need to know what you want? You need to understand what’s real? You need to decide what you’re going…

How often do you feel impatient when people won’t stop dragging things along that should have been done a year ago? — Aargh! It grinds my gears like nothing else and wakes up that little authoritarian in me. Sometimes, we want things to change for the better so badly that we get impatient when people refuse to get on board with our rational and well-thought-out ideas. It’s easy to forget that everyone…

Getting a ‘no’ hurts. It really hurts when you’re looking for a yes. — Of course, we know that behind every rejection, there’s a valuable lesson. But that helps little when you feel like being dragged back to square one. Here’s the thing: All no’s aren’t created equal, even if they’re coming from someone important — a person you see as an expert or…