Think Like Your Customer: Aligning Selling to Buying Process

Bill Stinnett's excellent book, Think Like Your Customer, should be required reading for anyone in Sales and Marketing, especially if you market high-value products and services.

A glaring Marketing Operations disconnect for many companies is our tendency to over-focus on What and How we want to sell, when we really need to develop a deeper understanding of What, Why and How our customers buy. Those of us in MO need to assert leadership in aligning our company's sales process with our customers' buying process.

The healing starts at home. Our collective … Read more →

Marketing Operations 2.0 Interview

Gary Katz authored a chapter in my book, Marketing 2.0, appropriately named Marketing Operations 2.0. Here is the definition of Marketing Operations (MO) from that chapter. Gary is CEO of Marketing Operations Partners, located in Silicon Valley. He has a background in PR. He developed a concept which intrigued me because it fits well with the mindset shift in my book.

“Marketing Operations is a relatively new discipline that can be defined as a comprehensive, end-to-end operational discipline that leverages processes, technology, guidance, and metrics to run the marketing function as a profit/value center, growth driver, change catalyst and fully accountable business. MO reinforces marketing strategy and execution with … Read more →

Online Marketing Operations Course


Is Marketing Operations (MO) a key part of your job?
• Are you leading or in the process of establishing an MO function?
• A member of the MO team?
• A member of the marketing, sales, operations, customer experience, strategy, finance, quality or IT staff who needs to align with Marketing Ops to do your job and help your enterprise succeed?
• Interested in Marketing Operations as a career?
• A vendor, consultant, integrator or business leader who wants to align your organization or clients to Marketing Operations best practices?

If MO is core to your career and/or your organization, you owe it to yourself to build your Marketing Operations competency. You need to know what you don’t know and learn what you need to know.

For the first time, you can make a commitment to that professional development in a structured, focused, self-pacedsetting through UCSC Extension’s Marketing Operations: The Engine of Marketing, a new 7-week online course … Read more →