Founder @ Sticky Tactics | Closing the GTM Visibility Gap in B2B Tech Nerd & #spoonie serving lead gen, marketing, and tech insights. he/him 🌈
Jersey City
Joined March 2012
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I just taught at one of the best business schools in the world.
My message: “Mind your Ps and Qs. But mostly your Ps.”
On Saturday, my professor asked me to teach a 15-minute session on promotion at Columbia Business School to a room of executive leaders from around the world.
We ended up going to 40 minutes – turns out execs are actually interested in marketing.
Most of their questions came back to the same few things:
👉 How to make marketing effective
👉 How to measure its ROI
👉 How to get the best results out of their teams
I told a client they should stop working with me.
I told them where they could get more bang for their buck.
So they left.
It connects to a class discussion I recently had at London Business School:
Which brings me back to my client.
I value honesty a lot – but I also know it pays to lose a client now so I can keep my reputation for agnostic advice.
When incentives punish the person who has to take the risk... Well, you get what you pay for.
"Do you ever crave salt?" - Doctor
"No... Well, sometimes, I find myself in the kitchen, pouring salt into my hands and licking it." - Me
"I'm going to go with 'yes.'" - Doctor
(memories from when I was first diagnosed with Addison's Disease)
Cypress and Sticky Tactics took a conference from 0 to 25k registrants over just 4 years.
Then I handed social and strategy over to their in-house team. That's the goal with the best engagements: build something that outlasts you.
Here's what Sticky Tactics is doing next:
I have room for an engagement or two before the year is out.
If your marketing is active but pipeline is blocked, or you're heading into a raise or a category fight and your story isn't landing, that's the work I do.
Stories stick in the mind better than pure facts – by more than 12 to 1*.
And yet most B2B content is a list of features and benefits.
"I can't wait to see which enterprise software platform has the best post today."
Said no one ever.
(*Stanford, Heath, 2007)
I just finished 6 weeks advising executives at M12 on their LinkedIn thought leadership.
What I tell them – and every client – is that people connect with a human before they connect with a brand.
That's why thought leadership breaks through when your brand posts struggle.