Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Thought Leadership with Mitchell Levy and Michael Procopio, Episode 29: July 2, 2014

Thought Leadership with Mitchell and Michael

In this episode, Mitchell and Michael interview #ThoughtLeader Lydia Sugarman in what she describes as a 50,000 feet-level conversation. Lydia’s definition of a #ThoughtLeader is someone who can take prevailing tools and ideas and re-work them into something new that better serves people.

Lydia shares her insights about marketing automation and how companies, especially those transitioning from traditional marketing to automation, find the right technologies or tools and use these tools to be successful. In marketing automation, you can have a 360 degree view of the customer that will help you better define their needs and respond to those needs. Relating her point to the Thought Leadership Funnel (http://thinkaha.com/thoughtleadershipfunnel), Lydia points out that marketing automation allows a 360 degree view of customers in real time and enables the company to nurture the customers to becoming advocates.

Lydia SugarmanLydia notes that some companies or individuals get intimidated by the cost of investing in marketing automation. She cites a recent study that differentiated first-time marketing automation buyers with established marketing automation users. The study found that buyers are cost-conscious and customers are feature-focused. What this means is that companies need to look at marketing automation as a worthwhile investment and it sets the beginning of everything for a company.

The interview touches on the question of choosing the right technology for automation, and here, Lydia points out that technology is not the end-all and be-all because technologies are just tools, relationships are more important. Keep return on relationship in mind vs. return on investment. Another interesting topic discussed was the frequently asked question on whether all employees should be advocates, to which Lydia says that employees should always have the excitement and passion, and knowing that they are making a difference would convert them into advocates.

Mitchell asks, when automation allows a 360 degree view of a customer, how much of the organization should be able to access that view? Lydia gives an interesting response where, technically, not all need to see everything. Marketing, sales, even accounting can have access to that 360 degree view but they need permission to see certain information, and the marketing automation tool should be able to have that feature.

To learn more about Thought Leadership and how it can help you be successful, subscribe to the channel: http://youtube.com/user/thoughtleaderlife.
Here are a couple of aha moments from the episode. See more in the “Aha Moments from Thought Leader Life” books available in the THiNKaha App: http://AhaAmplifier.com/.
• The worst thing for any company is for people to just come in & go through the motions, complacent, with no contribution. @venntive
• The tools are out there, it’s just a matter of using them. @venntive
• People talk! We just want to give a reason for them to speak well of us. @venntive
• We need to have a marketing dashboard. @happyabout


Guest Bio:

Lydia is the founder and owner of Venntive, a B2B technology company that offers an integrated platform for marketing automation, sales and relationship management applications. It specializes in developing and executing strategic online marketing and sales plans via Integrated Agile Marketing engagement.
To find out more about Lydia Sugarman, visit the website: http://www.venntive.com or follow @venntive on Twitter.

Join us 11 am PT / 2 pm ET / 7 pm GMT on Saturday every week. The show blog is Thought Leader Life.

Any comments or suggestions for the show please send them. Thank you for listening and if you like what you hear, please leave a review on iTunes! 

This episode was sponsored, in part, by THiNKaha.com, helping experts become thought leaders.

You can connect with Mitchell at MitchellLevy.com, @HappyAbout on Twitter, or join his Thought Leadership Best Practices Group on LinkedIn; and with Michael at MProcopio.com, on Twitter:@MichaelProcopio; or LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/MichaelProcopio.

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Posted by Michael Procopio on 07/02 at 12:41 PM
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