I just had the pleasure of spending 2 days helping a client jointly with my good friend and colleague Tom Grubb.  Tom, and the company he co-founded, Digital Pi, may be the most skilled marketing automation people on the planet, among other things, Tom used to run all...

Dear Reader, I’m excited to share this preview content of my upcoming book with you.  We live in a challenging time for marketing and sales professionals in B2B markets.  Information flows freely, markets are crowded, and buyers only engage on their terms, in their...

I do a lot of work with IT Security Vendors.   It's a fascinating place to be a marketer.   There is no doubt, IT Security is a very technical market.  And one that might change more continuously than any other B2B market I know.   Of course, we all know that there...

There is no doubt in B2B markets many, if not all companies strive for market leadership, but few breakthrough and achieve it.  Why?  The reasons are many.  Poor product market fit, poor user experience, misaligned pricing to value, the list goes on.  But even those...

In my last blog, I wrote about what I consider to be a bold and high return move by GoodData to lead a new segment that they call, "Insight as a Service" .  Insight as A Service as GoodData describes it is a much better mousetrap than Business Intelligence in the...

Business Intelligence is a established and growing market.  BUT it is a changing and fluid one, being impacted by many many of the trendy words you might hear like Big Data, Hadoop, IOT, Cloud and well others I'm sure.  It is also a crowded market, with established...

I've been working on a new model to think about market leadership and how to message at different phases of leadership.  I am doing a lot of work on this model, and would love your feedback. Market leaders are created not born.  In B2B markets, they will go through 3...

Part 1 – Baseball, SaaS and the Rise of the Data Nerds Baseball really boils down to one stat, score more runs than your opponent and you win, score less and you lose.  Do this 90 or more out of 161 games and you will probably make the playoffs.  Win 11 or 12 post...

I recently passed my 5 yr anniversary as a B2B marketing consultant in Silicon Valley and beyond.  In that time I’ve met some amazing CMOs and CEOs.  B2B Marketing is a never ending multi-layered multi-disciplinary challenge.  One , as I described to my daughters 4th...

Need feature benefit is the time tested sales and marketing technique that starts with a specific need, links a feature your product or service has to that need, and then proposes an expected benefit to be had.  This worked great 10 years ago in what I call the age of...

Market leadership is a very desirable position, there's no question about it.  However, new entrants are really faced with an uphill battle in establishing market leadership.  First of all, there is often an established category and leader. Second, in general, B2B...

As we saw in part 1 of this series, B2B Technology marketers are dealing with a new reality.  Information is abundant, Alternatives are Many and in response, Buyers are now fiercely independent and highly networked. Proving ROI means nothing except a check box, if you...

The second dimension of my Viewpoint is the articulation of a re-invented solution, which is covered in depth in this blog.  To quickly recap, this blog argued that you can re-invent your solution along 3 dimensions, Approach, Innovation and Mindset or AIM; show...

In this short series of blogs, I'll be applying my Viewpoint framework to explain why I think context, yes what I call Viewpoint, is so critical to Breakthrough, High Velocity B2B Marketing.   With deference to my friend and mentor Matt Church, who taught me not be...

Why do some companies, like FireEye, Zuora, and others raise their stories above the crowd, and get listened to and even obsessed over by prospects and customers alike?  I think it comes down to these simple, yet powerful three "cies": Consistency Veracity Ferocity...

I was in a client meeting yesterday, and a very interesting thing happened.  As we were reviewing website, the UE Web guy pulled up the Basecamp website.  After reviewing this site, which is pretty unique in its streamlined direct marketing approach, he said, "In many...

A quick Google of"Chief Content Officer" finds millions of entries, a wikipedia page and links to passionate blogs about the need for enterprises to have a CCO who can be the "corporate executive responsible for the digital media creation and multi-channel publication...

As I've blogged about here, marketers, especially high tech B2B marketers always overvalue value.  We tend to be enamored with the feature, function and benefits of our products and services.  And while I don't want to rehash the five reasons I've previously outlined,...

Salesforce, the granddady of them all in Cloud Computing, has shifted Viewpoints again. On August 31st of 2011, Salesforce announced the "Social Enterprise"  -" Our social enterprise vision fundamentally changes how companies collaborate, share and manage...

Introduction This is part 3 of a 3 part series on the mechanics of building Breakthrough Viewpoint.  This series is a "how to" guide to creating the 4 types of Breakthrough Viewpoints as described in this post - Trendspotting, Better Mousetrap, All Pain No Gain and...

Introduction: In part 1 of this blog series on Viewpoint, we explored the Y axis of the KJR Viewpoint framework, repeated below and discussed using the STEEP analysis method to label the Y-axis and defined point A, the "Trendspotting" Viewpoint.  In this blog, we will...

Introduction In my previous blog,  Standing out - 4 Types of Viewpoint That Can Get You Noticed I discussed how to find 4 spots on my Viewpoint Framework that can powerfully set you apart in the market and get you noticed.     The framework looks like this:  ...

(Ken's note: This blog is part of a series of blogs on Viewpoint.  After reading this introduction,  you may want to check out my step by step guide on developing your Viewpoint,  a 3 part series of blogs called - AIM STEEP to Build Breakthrough Viewpoint.) As I've...

I've been wondering a lot lately about the Technology Adoption Lifecycle and Geoffry Moore's classic Crossing the Chasm.   I believe that we are seeing the Chasm obliterated by technology and cultural changes.    I see three inter-related trends that are driving this...