#94: Shocking: businesses gonna be businesses, inbound is dead, internet optimists, and consistency in B2B sales.
Current mood:
Brr....
In this edition of The World's Best Newsletter:
1. Consistency in B2B sales - new research
2. Podcast: Research, marketing, and adult content?
3. Four types of former internet optimists
4. Shocking revelation: businesses gonna be businesses.
5. The Economic Forces that Led to Trump
6. Inbound is dead
7. Quote of the week: Coming back
1. Consistency in B2B sales - new research
What happens when you record 2,000,000 sales calls, analyze them using AI, then align the findings to market-leaders, and low-performers? You get a really interesting breakdown of what sales teams do at high-performing firms, a study backed by AI and grounded in common sense.
Read the article from Gong.io's Chris Orlob -- who found notably that:
A - Top producers ask questions throughout the call - a "balanced dialogue." Average producers front load their sales call w/ a barrage of questions at the beginning (that dreaded checklist...)
B - Sales teams at market-leading companies all talk about similar messaging on their calls. At non-leading companies, there are huge messaging gaps and NO consistency in the message.
"This is a living nightmare in which every sales rep makes up their own narrative as they go." "Consistency is the type of stuff that launches you into market leadership."
Read the full article.
PS: This is an excellent piece of thought leadership from a company using (and demonstrating the power of) its own product/data set. I'm also loving their fresh brand identity (about 6 months old now) and transparency into that process.
2. Podcast: Research, marketing, and adult content?
I recently sat down with Clare McDermott, the co-founder and chief research officer at Mantis Research, to talk about using research in marketing. It is so wildly misunderstood in the marketing realm. It is an area of immense opportunity and immense failure all at once.
The reason I wanted to have Clare on the show is because Clare knows the good, the bad and the ugly of using original research in B2B.
"Wait, marketers would never try to be extrapolating stories from survey data just to fit their narratives. What are you talking about Clare?" I ask, facetiously.
BONUS: We absolutely talk about grown-up videos, if ya know what I mean. Listen here!
3. Four types of former internet optimists
Where did it all go wrong?
This is a great read from Tim Hwang in the MIT Technology Review. He's the former global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google and current director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative.
He's recapped, in a wonderfully smart and snarky way, the current attitudes of "Depressed Former Internet Optimists (DFIO)" who, for one reason or another are recounting the demise of the internet as we know it. (Those reasons may include, oh, you know.... political polarization, mass diffusion of misinformation, harassment, trolling, and lack of privacy. NBD. Small things. Trivial.)
Their former optimistic vision of the internet is, as he puts it:
"unexpectedly deferred."
Ha.
The four types of DFIOs:
Purists, "The internet was a wonderful place before it became corrupted by corporations/commercialization/etc.” Purists want to launch the next great crusade and frequently talk about using blockchain for everything, breaking up the big tech firms, or putting an end to the scourge of advertising.
The Disillusioned, or their cousins, the Saw-It-All-Alongers, “The internet was never all that great." You’ll frequently find members of both groups enthusiastically using social media to hate on social media.
The Hopeful, "who try to vindicate the dreams of internet Optimism by foraging for positive moments in the wider world of the web."
The Revisionists, "Revisionists want to preserve the original aspirations for the web through amendment, calling for a new effort to design better communities and systems for governing society online."
His most important point - and a plea for change:
Both Optimism and Pessimism make the mistake of assuming that the internet has inherent features, but like any technology conceived of and built by humans, it is shaped by human struggles, by the push and pull of a multitude of interests and schools of thought. What’s needed is a coalition around a New Optimism—one that celebrates what’s working, is honest about what isn’t, and articulates a path forward grounded not so much in technological fixes as in a richer understanding of trust, identity, and community.
Read the full piece.
4. Shocking revelation: businesses gonna be businesses.
From the NYTimes this week:
"British lawmakers on Wednesday gave a gift to every Facebook critic who has argued that the company, while branding itself as a do-gooder enterprise, has actually been acting much like any other profit-seeking behemoth.
That gift was 250 pages’ worth of internal emails, in which Facebook’s executives are shown discussing ways to undermine their competitors, obscure their collection of user data and — above all — ensure that their products kept growing."
So... Haters gon hate.
Players gonna play (play play play play).
Taylor's gonna shake shake shake shake shake shake.
And businesses - of which Facebook is UNFREAKINGDOUBTEDLY ONE - are going to try and make money, despite the feel-good plea of their public values/mission and our strange aversion to treating them as such.
As Kevin Roose pointedly states:
"It should not come as a surprise that Facebook — a giant, for-profit company whose early employees reportedly ended staff meetings by chanting “domination!” — would act in its own interests."
What Facebook did specifically:
1. The company engineered ways to collect Android users’ data without alerting them.
2. Mark Zuckerberg personally approved cutting off a competitor’s data access.
3. Facebook used a privacy app to collect usage data about its competitors.
4. Facebook executives wanted more social sharing, as long as it happened on Facebook.
Full article.
RELEVANT: How Facebook's Local News Algorithm Change Led to the Worst Riots Paris Has Seen in 50 Years
5. The Economic Forces that Led to Trump
In this New Yorker piece, Ron Shaich, founder of Panera, lays out a compelling view of the danger of short-term thinking in our current business environment that, in his opinion, led to the conditions that allowed for our current political leadership, AKA Individual-1.
"According to Shaich, the resentment that these voters feel is a direct result of the quick-profits-over-all ethos that dominates economic thinking. “When we live in a world where we view value creation as the end, and not as a by-product, which is what short-term thinking lends itself to, we end up doing great damage to every other constituency, and that’s what ultimately drives back to the kind of ‘let’s rip down the establishment’ nihilism..."
He ends with a clear plea: "This system doesn’t serve the American people. There is an opportunity to ask ourselves, is this what we want?”
6. Inbound is dead
No I'm just kidding - you should likely not take anyone who makes sweeping statements like this in their posts or newsletters seriously - but it seems to be the sober topic of conversation going around after Hubspot (creators of the inbound/outbound dichotomy) announced they no longer hated advertising and would instead make their ad tools available to all customers.
Given the company's history of creating an enemy out of advertising, some are understandably calling the brand out on its shift.
But, if you're Hubspot -- you know marketers are gonna market, and you know Facebook is making $39B on ads, so you are not gonna leave that delicious pie alone. You're gonna get a piece of it, for sure. But, because you're Hubspot, you're gonna put your own spin on things. ("If you’re doing advertising in an inbound way that puts the needs of your audience first, it will become more cost-effective."
Is inbound dead? No. But it always was just a point of view - and those inevitably change.
7. Quote of the week: Coming back
“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
Have a great weekend,
Katie
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