A business colleague asked me what we looked for when recruiting new teammates at Fusion Marketing Partners. Since we pretty much confine our services to B2B marketing, the question could have been, “What are the characteristics of a good B2B marketer?” After taking a little time to think about this subject, here are my top five criteria:
Understands pull marketing. Most of our clients are doing some form of pull marketing. In other words, they want to use marketing techniques that attract the people who are already interested in what they are selling. This is a much more effective (and cost effective) approach than traditional push marketing. I recently wrote a blog post about pull marketing that you can reference here.
Has experience with social media. Social media is a low-cost way of generating awareness and leads for B2B marketers. We need to help our clients establish and implement social media programs using such tools as blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Too many marketing consultants do a poor job at their own social media promotion.
Is numbers-focused. B2B Marketing is about a lot more than clever slogans, creative design and slick materials. The best marketers know how to quantify and track every part of the process, from initial awareness, through inquiry generation, to driving sales opportunities and revenue. When you can’t measure these components, you are considered to be an expense. When you can measure these components (assuming the numbers are good) you are considered to be an investment. It is always better to be considered an investment than an expense.
Understands the relationship between marketing and sales. The point of marketing is to enable more revenue to be generated. This is true whether the sales model is Internet-based, channel based, or via a direct sales force. If you are interested in sales and marketing alignment, we have a great white paper on the subject at the Fusion Marketing Partners website that you can download here.
Knows how to deal with people. Marketing is a people business, and regardless of whether we are dealing with customers, prospects, partners or colleagues, we need to know what motivates them to action. For this reason, I prefer to hire marketers who are willing and able to get away from headquarters and go to where the true action happens – in the field.
