The Customer Journey Maestro

I specialize in building and executing content marketing strategies for companies seeking sustained revenue growth. My process is to create a customized messaging framework (aka, “brand story”), develop a content strategy and calendar, and execute the content strategy by building a content team and/or writing brand content.

Fractional Content Director

I love to write and create content of all kinds. My broad and deep experience across sales, marketing, and customer success gives me a unique perspective and the ability to write compelling content for just about any industry. My approach is to get the inside truth from the people behind each story, and I don’t believe in taking shortcuts. I write and publish for your customers, to engage them, educate them, and compel them to take action. The SEO stuff comes along for the ride. Let’s talk about your freelance writing/content needs.

Freelance Writer

I help B2B companies build and execute modern marketing strategies focused on customers.

B2B Marketing Advisor

Hire me on a full-time or part-time basis to up-level your go-to-market strategy. And it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Go-to-Market Strategy Advisor

Your customers have their own Journey that may not match your Funnel or Flywheel. If you want to understand their journey and be there when they need you, that takes work. Designing a customer experience that builds trust, now that's another level entirely. I'm here to help - on your journey.

Customer Journey Guide

On-demand expertise in marketing strategy, demand generation, content marketing, social media marketing, product and customer marketing, sales and marketing alignment, and customer success.

Fractional CMO/VP Marketing

Databox

Partner in Residence

CMO for Hire

Are you in transition? Starting from scratch or making a pivot to a new revenue growth strategy? My Virtual CMO services provide proven expertise to help you jumpstart sales, marketing, and customer experience prior to hiring executives and staffing departments. It's a low-cost, low-risk way to get the strategic advice you need.

Virtual CMO

Riptide Business Press

Ed Marsh and I have written a book, titled Common Sense Revenue Growth, that helps CEOs understand the digital and consumer disruption facing them today and develop plans to grow in spite of those challenges. Buy the book at www.commonsenserevenuegrowth.com.

Author, Podcaster and Consultant

Kuno Creative

Co-owned one of the first and most successful inbound marketing agencies, Kuno Creative. Grew the agency from a handful of talented marketers and designers to a 50+ person agency with clients ranging from national healthcare and technology companies to international consortiums and manufacturing giants. Specialized in marketing technology and sales enablement - helping companies fix leaky funnels and sales pipelines via strategy, marketing automation and optimized CRM utilization. Please visit Kuno's website, www.kunocreative.com for more information, or follow me on LinkedIn.

EVP and Co-Owner

Awakening Technology Company

Developed corporate websites from scratch using HTML/CSS, then created a proprietary CMS for creating client sites backed by a SQL database using ASP.net and later, Ruby on Rails.

Web Developer

Zydeco Energy

Independent oil and gas exploration company in Houston, TX. No longer in business.

Executive Vice President and CTO

INEXS

Exploration Geophysicist

Raytheon - GeoQuest

Product Marketing Specialist

Shell

Research professional working in electron microscopy for Shell Research and in geophysical interpretation research for Shell Exploration and Production.

Research Geoscientist

I made a pivot from marketing strategy consulting to B2B content strategy and writing. Why? Because content creation has always been a passion of mine and I believe in it for companies that want to grow sustainably and with an emphasis on their customers. I believe that writing and podcasting for a few good companies is the best direction for me, and a good move for them as well. My niche is content that helps your customers make better decisions throughout their customer journey. I call this “tipping point content”. It’s a blend of blogging and long-form writing and video content that’s directed at your customers’ “why” and gives them honest, in-depth reasons to take their journey to the next stage. If you are interested in discussing my approach and services, check out my portfolio at https://jmctigue.contently.com/ , please reach out, and let’s schedule a chat.

There’s an awful lot to sort through today and for the rest of this week, so I’m going to take a week off from writing.

My best wishes go out to all of the entrepreneurs who have been stressed way too much lately. We’re rooting for you!

John McTigue

It’s Monday, so time to reveal my writing plan for this week.

The topic is internal sales - getting what you want (or need) by convincing your higher-ups, despite all of the forces pushing back.

This topic is near and dear to my heart, because it’s probably the first thing I learned in business and in many ways the most valuable tool in my toolkit.

I’ll start with a true story that illustrates the topic. 

When I was first getting started, I was hired at an oil company. You may have heard of them. There’s a Shell station within a mile of just about everyone reading this.

My first position at Shell was as an electron microscopy team leader at one of their research labs in Houston. I know, weird way to get into sales and marketing, but bear with me…

The really strange thing was that Shell only had a couple of aging scanning electron microscopes (SEM) back then and very few people who knew how to use one. Forget about the newer tech, transmission electron microscopes (TEM), computer-aided image analysis, elemental micro probes, etc.

My job? Build all of that capability, starting from zero.

Price tag? Millions. Budget? Zero.

So I taught myself how to sell internally. 

I interviewed all of the stakeholders and many people outside of Shell. I figured out our “why” and put together presos, lunch-n-learns, crude brochures, anything I could think of, and started marketing to the people I would need to get buy-in and become my support network. I started recruiting for positions that didn’t yet exist. 

Then, I got to work. I worked the room, and the next room, and the next…

Within a year, I had built a state-of-the-art SEM/TEM/microanalysis lab in two U.S. locations and was traveling the globe to spread the word to other Shell labs and facilities. 

What did I learn? A lot, and I’ve been adding to my internal sales arsenal ever since. That’s what I’ll be talking about this week, so I hope you’ll tune in.

#internalsales #buyin #budget

If you live in the U.S., it’s later than you think, but not too late.

Give your loved ones a hug.

It's not so bad checking your ego at the door.

It'll still be there when you leave.

It’s Friday and time to summarize my content this week and plan for next week.

This week I focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the small business workplace. Why? Because it’s one of those topics that small business owners are aware of but not sure how to approach. Big businesses have to deal with #DEI because it’s expected and often required for compliance and legal coverage in certain regulated industries. #SMB, not so much, although the winds are changing quickly.

In particular, recent hiring trends among millennials and GenZ have seen a growing emphasis on fairness and diversity. Younger talent wants a workplace that serves both in-house needs and the community as a whole. They want to feel included and be a part of a company that really cares about its people.

I published 3 posts on DEI here in my LinkedIn feed, and the links are reproduced in the comments. I’m also constructing a page on my website that will list each week’s topic and links to posts. I’ll link the page here when I publish it soon.

FYI, this is the opening salvo of a new content strategy for me. My goals are as follows:

1. Organize my content by weekly topics that concentrate on issues I care about and for which I have either expertise or strong feelings. I hope this mini-series format gives my readers more meaning from browsing LinkedIn and some go-to resources for the topics I write about.

2. My goal is not to self-aggrandize in any way. I’m not tracking views, likes, or comments. If anything, I’m interested in starting conversations, so to the extent that I start and participate in them, the better. I’m not trying to generate leads or new business. This is strictly my attempt to give back to the community I belong to. I will consider it a success if my readers find it valuable.

Next topic for next week: Internal sales - getting buy-in on your ideas and proposed projects

Thanks for your support! John

#diversity #inclusion #smallbusiness 

Why the internal sale is never “closed”.

A well deserved pat on the back, for sure. You earned it.

You got the signatures on the paperwork, and delivery is scheduled, or you can login and start working today. That’s awesome 👏, but don’t forget…

You’re just getting started.

The most important step is yet to come. 

Remember those people who signed the paperwork or gave you the go-ahead? 

They want proof that their decision was a good one, and they want it yesterday. Ultimately, they want ROI numbers. At a minimum, they want tangible evidence that you can deliver what you said you would deliver. Overpromise and underdeliver? No way.

If you ever want to sell internally again, your mojo depends on what you do now. And you’ll need to sell again. Think about…

1. Upgrades and cross-sells. 

You’ll need to deliver more than once, and you’ll need to expand the value of your “service” across users, groups, departments, even divisions.

2. Enhanced capabilities.

You’ll want to improve the value of your “service” through integrations with existing systems and partnerships with allied teams.

3. You’ll seek to evangelize your “service” so that it becomes a critical part of your company strategy, one that stays off the chopping block when times are tough.

So you need to get busy now securing that future.

-> Take a leadership role, even if you don’t officially have one assigned to you. Make sure that everything from delivery to onboarding and training to customer success processes goes smoothely and that all of your stakeholders know where things stand. 

-> Keep that internal newsletter thing going, talk about your progress, your challenges, your solutions, and your dreams. 

In other words, keep selling. 

It’s your baby, keep nourishing it.

#internalsales #roi  #onboarding #continuousimprovement

How to get started on an internal sale.

Not surprisingly, sales is sales. 

The big difference here is "whom" you're selling to. It's your boss, and her boss... It's your peers, and their peers. It's the Board and the C-Suite. Depending on the budget you need, and the amount of change that's required, you will probably need to sell them all... and more.

Ask any successful sales rep, and they'll echo the above. 

Know your audience.

But there's a lot more prep work to do before you get started.

Again, like traditional sales, you need to know "why".

First, what do you want? In other words, what are you selling?

⚡ An idea, something bold?
💡 A game-changing piece of hardware or software?
🎯 A process or program?
🤓 A person or role?
✋ A promotion or raise?

You need to know your "why" as well as your audience's "why".

What's in it for you? What's in it for them? What's in it for your company? What's in it for your stakeholders? You must be able to rattle this stuff off each and every time you're asked.

This too 👉 what happens if you don't make this move happen? What's the impact on your audience? Your customers? Your company?

Don't just brainstorm this stuff. Write it down. Commit it to memory. Start writing about it. Kick it around with your trusted network. Take their input and evaluate it. What's their angle?

BUT DON'T SEND A MEMO. DON'T BLAST AN EMAIL. 

This is not how you build trust and momentum around your sales pitch.

We'll tackle steps 2, 3, and 4... in my next post.

For now, figure out exactly what you want, who needs to know, and why this is a win-win for the whole team. 

Be honest with yourself. Would you buy this from you?

Now, go buy lunch for a salesperson you trust. Ask for advice, but don't give away the store. Don't forget the "trust" thing may not be as tight as you think. If your pitch leaks out before you present it properly to the right people in the right order... curtains.

#internalsales #audience #why #whynow

How to close internal sales - Day 2

We talked about knowing your audience and your “why”. Now you know what to sell, and why. What about “how”?

I’ll offer a truism. You can’t sell to people who haven’t seen your pitch, unless you enlist those who have.

I go back to my early days at Shell, when I was trying to get buy-in for new equipment and staffing to build a state-of-the-art lab. How did I build up a groundswell of support?

First, I put on my salesman/politician hat. Every chance I got, I was talking up our new capabilities.

1. Whenever someone would visit the lab, I gave them a tour and showed them what we were working on, with an emphasis on things they were interested in. Folks from the Polymers group, for example, got a mini-lecture on how to use electron microscopy to analyze polymer properties and deduce reasons for failure.

2. Next, I volunteered to give a presentation whenever an opportunity arose. We had a monthly lunch-n-learn program that I volunteered for early and often. You could hear the buzz…

3. I started a newsletter for my lab and asked my team to participate with stories, short scheduled demos, and announcements. We circulated it via internal email - with approval from the Group Supervisor and General Manager of course.

4. I offered support for all the other team leads who saw what I was doing and wanted to get in on the buzz creation. I became the go-to guy on presos and newsletters - so people would consume ours to learn new tricks.

5. None of this happens without support from higher up. My mentor, who was involved in my recruitment, training, and career advancement, helped me in many ways - offering advice and consent and generally paving the way for the groundswell. If you don’t have a mentor, find one. Be bold about it. Most people will be flattered and want to help.

6. Most of all, consider your efforts to accomplish your internal sales goal as you would any important campaign. Remember your “why”, and never lose sight of the value you will provide others within and outside your sphere of influence.

Now go build that groundswell and close the deal.

#internalsales #buyin #selling

I wonder what people at #sxsw2023 will be talking about this week…

Friday? Already?

I guess so. Wow, that was quick. Let’s review.

This week, I posted about internal sales. 

I’m not even in sales, officially, but this topic is near and dear to my heart. Forty years ago, I started my career with an internal sale, back in the days when they would hire you for whom you were, not for your revenue potential. So I had a job with few official duties or responsibilities. It was up to me to invent them. 

Then I discovered that you can’t always get what you want, to borrow a phrase.

You have to sell it to the folks who write the checks, or click the button nowadays.

Still true. You can’t have shiny things without convincing your boss and her boss, etc.

So internal sales is a skillset everybody needs, and you really need it on Day 1 and every day thereafter. 

I’ve tried to help out with that challenge with a few tips I’ve learned along the way. If you want to review these tips, I’ve linked the posts in the comments here.

What’s next you ask?

Next week’s topic will be Process Design for Amateurs (like me).

I know, say what?

It’s another essential skillset. At some point in your career, probably sooner than you think, you will be asked to build things, fix things, and improve things. 

You’ll need processes to do that. Some of those processes will be complex, some hard to remember, some downright wicked.

And you won’t be alone. You’ll have a team, and you’ll be responsible for teaching them how to get things done. That’s where documented processes are essential. And, oh yeah, they make great LinkedIn posts too. 👊

So let’s dive in next week. Seems like a dry topic, but there will be some cool war stories, I promise. 

I hope you will share some of yours.

#process #processdesign #processimprovement #processautomation

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